Europe | Meet the hackers

Belarus’s beleaguered opposition is flirting with violence

Is a liberation army forming?

Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko speaks as he meets with foreign media at his residence, the Independence Palace, in the capital Minsk on February 16, 2023. (Photo by Natalia KOLESNIKOVA / AFP) (Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images)
Image: Getty Images
|WARSAW

The cyber Partisans, a group of anonymous dissidents, have hacked their way to the very top of Belarus’s authoritarian regime. They claim that last year when Alexander Lukashenko, the country’s dictatorial president, said he was more scared of cyber weapons than nuclear weapons, he was thinking of them. “What opposition group can say that they have the passport information of all its country’s citizens :)” typed a hacker identified only as Cyber #3. They have reason to grin. The Cyber Partisans are the cutting edge of a militant wing of Belarus’s opposition that is gearing up for action.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Meet the hackers”

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