​Russia wants to turn Ukraine into a “dependent dictatorship” like Belarus, the wife of imprisoned Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatskyi said on Saturday, presenting the award on his behalf, who spoke on his behalf, Reuters reports.

In October, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 was awarded to the Belarusian Ales Bialiatskyi, the Russian human rights organization “Memorial” and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties.

Receiving the award on her husband’s behalf at Oslo City Hall, Nataliya Pinchuk said Bialiatskyi dedicated the award to “the millions of citizens of Belarus who stood up and protested in the streets and online to defend their civil rights.”

“This underlines the dramatic situation and the struggle for human rights in the country,” she said, adding that she said her husband’s words.

Pinchuk only met her husband once after he was named a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in a prison behind a glass wall, she said at a press conference on Friday.

“I know exactly what kind of Ukraine would accommodate Russia and Putin – a dependent dictatorship. Just like today in Belarus, where the voice of oppressed people is ignored and not taken into account,” Pinchuk said on Saturday, quoting her husband.

Bilyatskyi was imprisoned last year

Belarusian security police detained 60-year-old Bialiatskyi and others last July during a crackdown on opponents of the country’s president, Oleksandr Lukashenka.

Authorities shut down non-state media and human rights groups after mass protests last August against presidential elections that the opposition said were rigged.

Bialiatski is the fourth person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison, after Karl von Osietzky of Germany in 1935, Liu Xiaobo of China in 2010 and Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, who was in custody in 1991 year

Belarus and Russia are officially part of the “union state” and have close economic and military allies. Lukashenko’s dependence on Moscow has deepened after Russia helped him quell protests that followed the disputed 2020 election.

Russia used Belarus as a springboard for its failed offensive on Kyiv, which began on February 24. Belarus has declared that it will not join the war in Ukraine. Russia said on Thursday that its troops were taking part in tactical exercises in Belarus, amid fears that Moscow was pressuring its ally to become more involved in the war.

Who is Ales Bialiatskyi?

Ales Bialiatskyi was one of the initiators of the democratic movement that emerged in Belarus in the mid-1980s, and devoted his life to the promotion of democracy and peaceful development in his native country.

Among other things, he founded Vesna in 1996 in response to controversial constitutional amendments that gave the president dictatorial powers and sparked large-scale demonstrations.

“Vyasna” supported the imprisoned demonstrators and their families. In the following years, “Vyasna” turned into a large-scale human rights organization that documented and protested against the authorities’ use of torture against political prisoners.

Authorities repeatedly tried to silence Ales Bialiatskyi.

He was in prison from 2011 to 2014. After large demonstrations against the regime in 2020, he was arrested again.

He is still being held without trial. Despite enormous personal difficulties, Bialatsky did not give up an inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus.