dMitry Baiduk scrolls thru his telephone and prevents at a crew lineup from June 2015. An under-21s pleasant at Oakwell between England and Belarus does now not linger in lots of recollections however he can image it obviously, recalling the instant he got here on overdue within the recreation to percentage a pitch with Harry Kane, Danny Ings, Jesse Lingard and Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
Nobody can take that away however at the moment the pictures advised a query: “Would Kane be able to imagine what has happened to me since?”
Probably now not. Baiduk’s occupation was once commencing when he took a choice that during impact reduce it quick. Early in 2021, he was once requested via his then employers, Dinamo Brest, to signal a letter in make stronger of Belarus’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. The govt had demanded no less than 10 avid gamers’ signatures in change for persevered monetary make stronger of the membership. Along with Vitaliy Gaiduchik, Baiduk refused. Upon studying that 5 teammates had long gone forward and signed the report, the pair requested for his or her contracts to be terminated.
They went to a close-by cafe, the deed having been accomplished. “We just drank coffee without speaking,” Baiduk says. “Vitaliy finally asked: ‘Do you have a plan?’ Neither of us did. We had no idea what would happen next but the most important thing was that our consciences and honor were clear.”
It is vanishingly rare for an active Belarusian footballer to speak publicly about how sport and, by extension, those playing it can be abused by a regime that ruthlessly punishes the faintest hint of dissent with up to 12 years in prison. Baiduk has taken a calculated risk in doing so: he wants to spread the message that football is not a viable career in his country for anyone who refuses to toe the government line and that the safety net for thpse who resist is virtually nonexistent.
“Sometimes I think I’m no longer a professional footballer,” he says. Continuing his occupation in Belarus after leaving Brest was once now not an possibility: the letter was once circulating round top-flight golf equipment and he didn’t want telling that, six months after an election that had introduced loads of 1000’s to the streets in protest towards Lukashenko, a clampdown was once within the air.
He worked as a taxi driver in Minsk for several months but his safety was a constant concern. A contact helped him found a club in Poland. The tiny fourth-tier side Znicz Biala Piska, from the remote north-east, took him on but his new life bears no comparison.
Baiduk is far safer outside Belarus but it is considerably poorer. A Bate Borisov youth product who had ended up at another local powerhouse in the 2019 champions, Brest, his salary back home reached about £2,000 a month. He has moved from Znicz to nearby Mamry Gizycko, whose part-time operation provides a monthly salary of less than £500 that he supplements with daily eight-hour shifts at a woodworking factory. That adds an extra £650 but still brings him well under the average Polish wage. After finishing hard, physical work at 2pm he drives 40 miles to training and is exhausted when the day ends.
He is immensely grateful to the factory owner, Marek Jankowski, who was a board member of Znicz when he joined, for arranging his documentation and both of his jobs upon arriving in Poland. “I like the people here and feel quite comfortable,” he says, but there is little doubt he should be playing on a higher stage.
“My new teammates were surprised to see a player with my level of experience. When they found out why I’m here, they told me I was crazy and had made a big mistake. But it’s better to work in a factory than play with a Belarusian flag on my shirt, as they do back home.”
Sitting next to Baiduk in the bar area of a Warsaw hotel is Alexander Sverchinsky, who can tell his own story of flight. Sverchinsky, a former top-flight player, had attempted to create a formal players’ union in Belarus but his efforts were twice rejected by the Ministry of Justice. When checking in to fly from Minsk airport two years ago, he detected that state operatives had followed him with a view to his arrest. He escaped and, via a terrifying journey through forests and in a boat, arrived in Russia. Now based in Poland, he uses his legal qualifications to fight on behalf of Belarusians who are in dispute with clubs and agents. Last year, he helped win 16 cases; the work is pro bono but he sees no other recourse for colleagues who need help.
“I’ve paid my price for creating an independent union but I will continue to fight, even if I’m going it alone,” Sverchinsky says. He and Baiduk noticed, first-hand, how the web tightened on footballers who dared categorical their perspectives. At Gorodeya, the top-flight membership the place Baiduk performed between his time at Bate and Brest, the crew had been warned via control to steer clear of attending the mass demonstrations that swept the rustic, speaking about politics within the dressing room or talking to opposition media.
In a stunning case, Baiduk’s 19-year-old Gorodeya teammate Rostislav Shavel was once imprisoned 3 times, for greater than a month in overall, after taking part in non violent protests. Shavel is banned from touring in another country or signing for any other Belarusian membership. He has won nameless monetary make stronger, thru avid gamers sympathetic to Sverchinsky’s union, to assist his restoration from a knee damage however his skilled occupation is also over earlier than it had in point of fact begun.
“Politics is about values, it’s about how you were raised,” says Baiduk, whose overdue father was once a passionate proponent of the democratic values Lukashenko defaces. It is commonplace wisdom in Belarus, even though now not admitted via the regime, that 48 footballers are blacklisted via the ministry of game. Most are amongst 97, Sverchinsky integrated, who participated in an athletes’ video condemning state violence in 2020. It bans them from signing new contracts in Belarus and, in lots of circumstances, has ended in termination of present ones.
Bate Borisov contested closing Tuesday’s Champions League first qualifying spherical tie towards Partizani Tirana with out 4 first-teamers whose offers had been cancelled, formally via mutual settlement, earlier than the season started in March. The league leaders, Neman Grodno, had been with out 4 blacklisted avid gamers for his or her Conference League tie with Vaduz.
Days earlier than the primary leg their carrying director, Dmitri Kovalenok, was once arrested at the pretext of subscribing to opposition information channels and spreading unwelcome perspectives throughout the crew. He was once launched after 48 hours however there was once no probability of staying hired. Kovalenok had, like Baiduk, refused to signal a letter backing Lukashenko and the regime’s tentacles had in the end discovered him. Belarusian soccer is destroying itself from inside of however the govt seems to not care. “Our league wasn’t bad in the past but since the election it has become much worse,” Baiduk says.
The checklist of abuses towards and its members stretches over soccer and contains the long jail sentence given to the journalist grew to become participant Aliaksandr Ivulin, interviewed via the Guardian in march. Last 12 months, Sverchinsky submitted a file to Fifpro, the worldwide avid gamers’ union, detailing the human rights violations inflicted on Belarusian soccer. It is a sobering learn; he had was hoping it will lend a hand the accession of his union into Fifpro, possibly in partnership with its counterpart in Lithuania to bypass its non-recognition in Belarus, however this is but to achieve fruition.
Neither Baiduk nor Sverchinsky blames the numerous avid gamers in Belarus who, in spite of being repulsed via their govt, choose to stay quiet and play on. Many have households to feed or houses to pay for. Sverchinsky is adamant that what he steadily calls “our problem” touches each and every skilled within the country. The Belarus nationwide crew and membership aspects had been banned from taking part in competitively towards overseas opposition in their very own nation because the full-scale Ukrainian struggle started however Uefa and Fifa are but to harden their stances within the face of allegations that the federal government has interfered damagingly within the game.
It must now not need to fall upon figures similar to Baiduk to hazard themselves via exposing the truth however, even supposing the teenager who shared a pitch with Kane may have seemed on in horror, he would now not alternate the rest. “If I had to make this choice again, between supporting a dictator and obeying my conscience, I would choose conscience,” he says.
“No matter how hard my life has become, I don’t regret my decision.”