Belarusian dissident Karatch, my country appendix of Russia

(ANSA) - TRIESTE, 10 MAR - President Aleksandre Lukashenko of Belarus "is helpful to Putin, many state-owned enterprises answer to the Russian Defense Minister. Belarus is less blocked by sanctions than Russia, so Minsk supplies Moscow with many products, as well as logistical support from the military point of view. In short, Belarus is a kind of appendage of Russia." This was said by Olga Karatch, a Belarusian journalist, political scientist and activist for peace and human and civil rights, last night in Trieste at a public meeting sponsored as part of Euromediterranea by the Alexander Langer Stiftung Foundation, Articolo 21 with Teatro Miela and Premio Luchetta.Karatch will conclude today in Milan a tour of a number of Italian cities that began in Rome to collect the Langer Prize 2023 she just won, returning to Vilnius, Lithuania, where she lives in exile with her family after being imprisoned and tortured in the prisons of the Belarusian regime.
    Olga Karatch stressed that her country "acts as a military rear guard for Russia, there is Wagner, instructors in contact with Russia, and Russian soldiers wounded in the war being treated in Belarus."The country, however, "is divided because civil society is pro-Ukrainian.But just wearing yellow and blue clothes can result in jail time, as happened to a teacher who had a yellow and blue hair clip in her hair and was arrested in class."Karatch heads 'Our House' (Nash Dom), an organization that helps dissidents, conscientious objectors and people who have suffered human rights violations in Belarus.The journalist emphasized the great difficulty of life in Lithuania for the thousands of people who have fled the Lukashenko regime."The authorities consider these people a threat to national security and aim to bring them back to Belarus where they risk death." (ANSA).