A presidential “election” in Belarus: the crisis continues to deepen

Ugis Libietis is a long-time Latvia Radio journalist who specializes in world events. During his more than 20-year-long career, he has covered and analysed various political processes in different regions of the world, from the US presidential elections and ending to reporting from such exotic countries as Turkmenistan, Mongolia or Myanmar. The materials about the 2010 and 2011 protests in Belarus have also gained international recognition. In 2014 and 2022, Ugis also covered events in Ukraine and Crimea. His academic research interests include Belarus, Ukraine and the Eastern Partnership Program of the European Union, but in recent years much attention has also been devoted to security and defence policy issues.

Anaïs Marin is an Associate Fellow with the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House and an associate expert on Russian malign influence in the EU-funded “Protecting European Values” project led by the College of Eastern Europe (KEW, Wojnowice). She received her PhD in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris/CERI. From 2018 to 2024 she held the mandate of UN Special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus. She now works as a consultant, based in Warsaw.

Yevhen Mahda is Associate Professor at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and Executive Director at the Institute of World Policy, Ukraine. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Taras Shevchenko National University. His areas of academic expertise include hybrid warfare, neighbourhood policy and International Relations. His main publications include “Hybrid War: Survive and Win”, “Russia’s Hybrid Aggression: Lessons for the World”. He is a founder of the Telegram channel “Belarus-Ukraine Observer”, dedicated to relations between Belarus and Ukraine and author of the concept “1000 Steps in Belarus-Ukraine Relations”.

Kristiina Silvan is Postdoctoral Fellow in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. She earned her PhD with Distinction in the discipline of Political History at the University of Helsinki in February 2022. Her PhD dissertation is titled Legacies of the Komsomol: Government-Affiliated Youth Activism in post-Soviet Belarus and Russia. Currently, Dr. Silvan works primarily on state–society relations in Central Asian states, especially Kazakhstan, and Russia’s role in the Central Asian region. Her research articles have been published in the journals Europe-Asia Studies, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Studies and Idäntutkimus: Finnish Review of East European Studies.