Hijacking Western Complacency

In addition to reporting on Belarusian security forces' violent crackdown against peaceful demonstrators, Nexta had provided daily instructions on when, where, and how Belarusians should mobilize during last fall's countrywide mass protests against Lukashenko's bogus election victory. Its Sunday calls for a National March for Freedom brought as many as 200,000 people into the streets of Minsk. And all of these demonstrators knew precisely what to do, because they were following the playbook published by Protasevich and his colleague, Nexta founder Stepan Putilo.

Following this unprecedented uprising, Lukashenko's regime panicked, and for good reason. Nexta was collecting and sharing information and photos from all over Belarus. Every message, photo, and call to action that it published went viral, reaching people across the country and around the world.

The key to Nexta's power was that it based itself outside of Belarus, in Warsaw. The Lukashenko regime could neither turn off its internet connection nor imprison or shoot it, as it was doing with opposition outlets and protesters still in Belarus. Lukashenko was doubtless infuriated by the fact that the protests were being guided not so much by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the likely winner of the August election, but by an elusive new-media operator beyond Belarus's borders.

Since the release in March of a Nexta documentary film exposing Lukashenko's ill-gotten riches (similar to a recent viral film about Russian President Vladimir Putin published by the now-imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny), Lukashenko has been prepared to move heaven and earth to take down his twenty-something bêtes noires. In his mind, Nexta is the keystone buttressing all of the various fronts of the...