Alaksandr Milinkiewicz died on 11 August 2026 on Tuesday morning at the age of 79. He was a candidate for democratic opposition in the 2006 presidential election in Belarus and a Sakharov Prize winner. For Poland it is the departure of a man who understood the freedom of Belarus besides as a condition for the safety of our region.
Belarusian freedom policy is gone
Information about the death of Alaksandr Milinkiewicz was provided by independent Belarusian media, citing close politicians. He was 79. The household had previously informed about his wellness problems, and the Belarusian portal It reminded me that in November 2025 he underwent a major surgery.
Milinkiewicz was 1 of those characters whose résumé grew above the organization run. For years he was on the side of free Belarus, that is, Belarus, which does not want to be a Russian hall or police farm of Alaksandra Lukashenko. From the Polish perspective, this was not a distant matter. The destiny of Belarus always touches our security, the border and the place of Poland between East and West.
He was associated with Grodne, besides crucial for Polish memory and presence in the Kresach. He was a physicist by education. From 1990 to 1996 he served as Deputy Mayor of Grodn and later worked in social and political organizations that built independent civic life in Belarus. This was a brave job, due to the fact that the Lukashenko government destroyed not only parties, but besides the specified ability of society to organise itself.
2006 and the Test Against Lukashenko
He was most remembered as a joint Democratic force candidate in the 2006 presidential election in Belarus. According to authoritative data, he was to get 6% of the votes and Lukashenko 83%. The West and global organisations considered those elections undemocratic. For many Belarusians Milinkiewicz then became a symbol of peaceful opposition.
After the vote, he called on supporters to protest. The demonstrations in Minsk, including the business protest in October Square, were brutally broken by the militia. Milinkiewicz was arrested for 15 days. This is how the authoritarian strategy works: it first doubles the rules, then punishes those who refuse to pretend that everything has happened honestly.
This experience is coming back in a fresh context today. Belarus after 2020 became even stronger in the orbit of dependence on Moscow. Repressions against opposition, force on Poles in Belarus and instrumental usage of the border show that the freedom of the Belarusian nation is not a romanticist decoration. It is simply a circumstantial component of Poland's security. We besides wrote about this wider dispute in the text New Belarus 2026 in WarsawWhere the question about the state after Lukashenko sounded very practically.
A friend of Poland and Borderland
Milinkiewicz was an honorary associate of the Union of Poles in Belarus. That fact matters. The Polish number in Belarus has been experiencing the regime's force for years, and the memory of Polish heritage is treated by Minsk as something suspicious. We saw it even erstwhile Lukashenka government removed Kościuszko monument from his home in Brest.
Marshal of the legislature of Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska wrote after his death that the symbol-man who dedicated the life of democracy in Belarus and friendly Polish-Belarusian relations had left. At this point it is worth to postpone the national organization dispute. There are matters in which Poland should talk with 1 voice: the repression of Lukashenko, the rights of Poles in Belarus and the independency of our east neighbour belong to them.
Milinkiewicz was besides a social advisor to Swiatlana Cichanouska after mass protests from 2020 and 1 of the initiators of the Free University of Belarus in Poland. For the emigration opposition, his biography was a bridge between the generation of earlier opposition and a fresh wave of civilian rebellion.
Awards were a sign, not a meaning of life
In 2006, the European Parliament granted Milinkiewicz Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. He besides received the Kazimierz Pulaski Prize “The Knight of Freedom” and the Prize of Freedom. Sergio Vieira de Mello for his peace effort. These distinctions spoke much about recognizing the West, but did not exhaust the meaning of its activities.
The most crucial thing was something simpler: Milinkiewicz reminded that the nation did not gotta accept life in a lie. Belarusians have been taught political helplessness for years. The government wanted them to think of the state as an apparatus of fear, and freedom as an insurmountable risk. Milinkiewicz responded with a calm, stubborn action.
The Polish right should look at this biography without naivety. Free Belarus will not emergence from the very sympathy of Western salons. Awards, conferences and gestures are not enough. A consistent policy is needed: the defence of Poles in Belarus, support for real independency environments, hardness towards the government and the awareness that Moscow will always want to keep Minsk as a strategical buffer.
Memory and Polish Interest
The death of Alaksandr Milinkiewicz adds an crucial chapter of the Belarusian opposition, but does not close the case of Belarus. For Poland it is simply a neighbour whose destiny affects borders, trade, military security, the situation of Poles beyond the east border and Russian force in the region.
In the mournful speech 1 must say the essential thing: Milinkiewicz belonged to people who tried to save the dignity of politics where the state was subjected to fear. His life reminds us that the freedom of the nations of our region is connected. Poland cannot turn its eyes distant from Belarus due to the fact that the emptiness after freedom always fills the empire.
Source: Gazeta.pl, PAP, Interia, European Parliament.
Source: News
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