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The street protests drew tens of thousands of people — including top athletes — in a major challenge to the strongman’s rule, before being violently suppressed.
Dolidovich and her family are now in Poland, her father and coach, seven-time Olympian cross-country skier Sergei Dolidovich, told The Washington Post.
“We left the country, and even though it may have been difficult, it’s easier to breathe now,” he said.
Darya Dolidovich was not a contender to compete in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, which kicked off last week. But another Belarusian cross-country skier, Sviatlana Andryiuk, told Reuters last month that she was also blocked from competing internationally. Andryiuk said sports officials had accused her of supporting the opposition, even though she said she had never publicly expressed her political views.
The move by Belarusian officials forced Andryiuk to miss a qualifying event that could have allowed her to take part in the Beijing Olympics, she told Reuters. She also lost her state job, and said she was considering seeking refuge in Poland.
The country, which shares a border with Belarus, is becoming a haven for Belarusian dissident athletes. Olympic runner Krystsina Tsimanouskaya sought asylum there after defecting from her home country during the Tokyo Games in August.
Tsimanouskaya had criticized Belarusian Olympic officials on social media after they tried to force her to run in a relay for which she had not trained. She said those comments led authorities to attempt to force her home. She refused and sought protection from the Japanese police at Tokyo’s airport in an incident that renewed international condemnation of Lukashenko’s crackdowns.
Darya is one of Belarus’s top junior cross-country skiers, according to Reuters, which first reported on her flight to Poland.
Sergei told The Post that Belarus sports authorities cited what they described as unsportsmanlike conduct by Darya. But he and his daughter believe the real motivation was political. Sergei had previously received reprimands for speaking out against the government.
The move is "their way of showing they can do whatever they want,” he said. “There were no threats but I understood that there is no life for us there, Darya won’t be able to run there and her career basically ended on Dec. 27.”
The International Ski Federation website now lists Darya as “not active” and indicates that she last competed internationally in late December, in Russia.
Sergei said the family left Belarus without telling anyone and reunited in Warsaw on Monday. They are still figuring out where and how long they will stay.
Darya was supposed to finish high school this year. She told Reuters she was “upset” about having to leave and that she didn’t know how she would complete her studies in Poland. Sergei said he and his daughter still hope Belarusian authorities will lift the ban — but if not, “possibly we will consider changing our citizenship.”
The Belarus Ski Union and the International Ski Federation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Dolidovich family’s decision to leave highlights the climate of repression in which Belarusian athletes live and compete. Other elite athletes and coaches have faced prison time, expulsion from national teams and dismissal from jobs for opposing the government.
During the 2020 protests, security forces detained thousands and subjected hundreds to “torture and other ill-treatment,” according to a Human Rights Watch report. Several people died as a result of police actions.
Journalists, activists, rights workers and IT specialists have been jailed since then. Crackdowns have driven many Belarusians into self-imposed exile.
Lukashenko, who has ruled the Eastern European country for nearly three decades, has taken increasingly bold steps to quash challenges to his rule. He provoked international outrage in May when he sent a fighter jet to ground a commercial plane carrying a prominent dissident-journalist. And European Union officials accused Lukashenko of weaponizing migrants over the summer as relations between the E.U. and Belarus deteriorated.
Western countries, including the United States, have imposed tough sanctions on Belarus. But the government’s close relationship with Russia has cushioned the blow.
President Vladimir Putin’s support for Belarus appears to be paying off: Belarus is hosting a massive joint military exercise beginning Thursday. The event has heightened fears in the West of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Moves against prominent athletes could further cement Belarus’s status as an international pariah. The United States last week imposed visa restrictions on Belarusian nationals “for their involvement in serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activity,” according to a State Department news release.
“The United States condemns all such activity, including the attempt to forcibly repatriate Belarusian Olympian Krystsina Tsimanouskaya during the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games last year,” the statement said.
The International Olympic Committee said in September it was investigating two Belarusian coaches accused of trying to force Tsimanouskaya to fly home. But the IOC has so far opted not to suspend Belarus’s Olympic committee from participating in the Games. Tsimanouskaya has called for stronger action from international sports authorities.
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