Anatoly Lebedko

Born in the village of Trylies [be], then part of the Stoŭbtsy Raion within the Minsk Region of the Soviet Union's Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Lebedko graduated from the Minsk State Pedagogical Institute in 1985 with a degree in history and French. He subsequently worked as deputy director of a boarding school in the town of Ashmyany, in the Grodno Region.

In 1990, at the age of 28, Lebedko was elected a deputy of the Supreme Council of the Byelorussian SSR (12th convocation) for the Ashmyany constituency in the Grodno Region, where he was then working as the boarding school's deputy director; his candidacy was put forward with the backing of the district committee of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol).^{[citation needed]}

In 1994, Lebedko was one of a group of young, reform-minded Supreme Council deputies — dubbed the "young wolves" and including Viktar Hanchar, Alyaksandr Feduta, Viktor Sheiman, among others — who joined the presidential campaign of Alexander Lukashenko, seeing him as their best vehicle for displacing the Soviet-era nomenklatura aligned with Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich.^[1] Alyaksandr Feduta, a former press secretary of that campaign, later quoted Lebedko's recollections of the loosely structured 1990 Supreme Council and of the calculation among the "young wolves" that backing Lukashenko offered the best chance of taking power from the old guard, in his book Lukashenko: A Political Biography.^[2]

After Lukashenko's victory in July 1994, Lebedko briefly served, on an unpaid basis, as an adviser and presidential representative to the Supreme Council.^{[citation needed]} His alliance with Lukashenko broke down later that year: after a report on corruption in the president's circle by deputy Sergei Antonchik was banned from publication at the last moment, leading newspapers to appear with censored blank sections known as "white spots" (белые пятна), Lebedko later recalled, "1994 was the appearance of white spots, when newspapers came out without the information that had been banned. After that, we went our separate ways."^[3]

Lebedko emerged in the 1990s as one of the leading critics of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, whom Lebedko, along with other opposition leaders and many western governments, considers a dictator.

Lebedko's strident opposition to Lukashenka led to increasingly bitter confrontations with the Belarusian authorities through the late 1990s and into the 2000s. He was arrested numerous times for participating in unsanctioned protests and marches, including the 1999 Freedom March; was charged with libel against Lukashenko several times; and was beaten outside his home by masked men he alleges were connected to Lukashenko. Lebedko appears to have drawn particular ire for his relatively high visibility and frequent contact with groups outside Belarus, who Lukashenko accuses of meddling in Belarus's internal affairs. In particular, one of Lebedko's arrests came shortly after he had spoken on the floor of the United States Senate and at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in October 1999, prompting letters of protest from both bodies.

Following an October 2004 election, which combined a referendum on permitting Lukashenko a third term with parliamentary elections, Lebedko led slightly over a thousand opposition protestors into the streets of Minsk on 18–19 October. Lebedko and other opposition leaders charged that the elections were rigged, an accusation echoed by OSCE election monitors. During the second day of protests on October 19, Lebedko was arrested along with two other opposition leaders, Mikola Statkevich and Paval Sieviaryniets, as well as an Associated Press photographer who had been covering the protest. Lebedko's supporters claim he was severely beaten by riot police following his arrest; he ended up in the hospital, reportedly with fractured skull, broken ribs and internal injuries.

At the Congress of Democratic Forces in October 2005, he lost by just a few votes to Alaksandar Milinkievič, who became (with Lebedko's subsequent support) the opposition's primary candidate in the 2006 Belarusian presidential election.

Lebedko has been detained on numerous occasions since the late 1990s. He was arrested during the 1999 Freedom March, and was arrested and severely beaten by riot police on 19 October 2004 during protests against the official results of that year's referendum and parliamentary election, leaving him hospitalised with a fractured skull, broken ribs and internal injuries.

On the night of 19–20 December 2010, following protests against the disputed presidential election, Lebedko was seized from his apartment by unidentified men and held in a KGB pre-trial detention centre, accused of organising mass riots.^{[citation needed]} Amnesty International designated him a prisoner of conscience on 11 January 2011, and he was released on 6 April 2011.^{[citation needed]}

In May 2021, Lebedko was detained near a Minsk court where the "student case" trial was underway and was sentenced to 30 days of administrative detention at the Okrestina detention facility for participating in an unauthorised gathering; he later described conditions there as "constant torture of people."^[4] Belarusian security forces subsequently searched his home in July 2021 and detained him again in October 2021 while he was coordinating the work of a Public Constitutional Commission.^[5]

In January 2022, Lebedko reported that Belarusian authorities had opened a criminal case against him, with his wife summoned as a witness; he said he had not been told which article of the criminal code he was accused under.^[6] As of 2026, Lebedko lives in Vilnius; no in-absentia verdict against him personally has been publicly reported, although his son, Artsiom Lebedko, was separately convicted in Belarus in August 2023 and sentenced to three and a half years in prison for financing organisations designated as "extremist."^[7]

Lebedko chaired the United Civic Party from 15 April 2000 until 24 September 2018, when he was succeeded by Nikolai Kozlov and stepped down to found the non-governmental organisation "European Dialogue".^[8] The party, founded in 1995 through the merger of the United Democratic Party of Belarus (established 1990) and the Civic Party (established 1994), was one of the oldest opposition parties in post-Soviet Belarus; it was formally liquidated by Belarusian authorities on 15 August 2023, although some members have continued to describe themselves as carrying on its work.^{[citation needed]}

In June 2007, the OGP and Russia's Union of Right Forces (SPS) signed a cooperation agreement in Moscow, at the close of a joint conference titled "Russia and Belarus: How to Implement a Strategy of Partnership."^[9][10] Both parties said, according to contemporary reports, that they were also prepared to consider unification of the two countries while preserving their state sovereignty.^[10] SPS leader Nikita Belykh said the two countries were "genuinely destined for some kind of close interaction," which he suggested could take the form of "a single state, a customs or other union, or simply an agreement between the countries," adding that his party saw a possible "union of sovereign states."^[9][10]

Reports of the event differed in which of Lebedko's remarks they emphasised. Vek reported that Lebedko told the conference that Lukashenko's monopoly over Russian–Belarusian relations was over, and described the Belarusian political system as "Lukashism" — a mixture of totalitarianism and, in his words, "rank Latin American populism" — calling Lukashenko himself a leader of "forces of revanchism" across the former Soviet Union, while noting that a substantial minority of Belarusian society, which he put at 25–30 percent, held democratic values.^[9] A separate report citing Telegraf.by instead quoted Lebedko as saying that Lukashenko could potentially become president of a unified state, with the only obstacle being that "Lukashenko is not liked at the level of the power structures," while noting that "at the level of the ordinary person, he enjoys fairly serious support both in Russia and in Ukraine," and that Lukashenko had "become a brand" that various political forces sought to use for their own domestic purposes.^[10]

In 2013, the party signed a cooperation agreement describing itself and Russia's Republican Party of Russia – People's Freedom Party (RPR-PARNAS) as "friendly parties," a document signed by Lebedko and RPR-PARNAS co-chairman Boris Nemtsov.^{[citation needed]} Nemtsov and Lebedko, who were personally acquainted for around 15 years, were also at the centre of a media controversy in 2002 when a transcript of one of their phone conversations was published in the Russian press; in it, Nemtsov told Lebedko he had lobbied the Kremlin to engage with the Belarusian opposition and gave him a contact number for the office of Kremlin deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov, describing Surkov as "the most influential man in the Kremlin."^[11][12]

In 2019, Lebedko founded and became director of the Centre for Socio-Economic, Historical and Cultural Research and Development Forecasts "European Dialogue" (Учреждение "Европейский диалог"), a Minsk-based non-governmental organisation intended as an uncensored discussion platform on EU–Belarus relations, alongside groups such as the Constitutional Commission chaired by former Supreme Council speaker Myechyslaw Hryb.^[13][14] Following the 2020–2021 crackdown on Belarusian civil society, in which the organisation was among the NGOs targeted by the authorities, "European Dialogue" was re-established in Lithuania as the public institution VšĮ Centras "Europos Dialogas" (legal entity code 306801876), based in Vilnius, with Lebedko continuing as director.^[15][16]

According to the organisation's 2025 activity report filed with Lithuania's Register of Legal Entities, Europos Dialogas reported income of €112,488 for the year.^[17]

In August 2022, veteran opposition politician Zianon Pazniak publicly accused Lebedko of being a security-service agent, referring to him by an alleged codename, "Raymon", after Lebedko took part in an opposition conference in Vilnius organised by the office of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.^[18] Belarusian media noted that this was one of many such unsubstantiated accusations of security-service links that Pazniak had made over the years against numerous opposition figures who disagreed with him, a pattern for which he had himself been publicly criticised by other opposition politicians.^[19]

Lebedko currently functions as Representative for Constitutional Reform and Parliamentary Cooperation in the office of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.^[20]

• Biography on United Civil Party of Belarus site
• US Senate speech on Lebedko's arrest (Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, October 22, 1999)
• "'Little Stalin' tightens grip on Belarus" (The Daily Telegraph, October 16, 2004)
• "Dozens arrested at Belarus rally" (BBC News, October 19, 2004)
• "In Belarus, Police Arrest Opponent of President" (The New York Times, October 20, 2004)