Dmitrii Bondarenko calls upon people to save Sannikov

Dmitrii Bondarenko, a political prisoner, is calling upon people to save the presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, who is also imprisoned.

He has written about this in a letter to Victor Boldin, a former personal aide of Sannikov in the Mogilyov region.

“To them – he’s a bone in the throat,” he writes in the letter to Boldin, who has passed it to BelaPAN. Bondarenko, the head of Sannikov’s election campaign, notes that “these days I have been in constant fear for him after a certain ‘comrade’ said on television that ‘we will improve their (political prisoners’) conditions of detention at the request of the EU.’ It sounded very ominous.”

In Mogilyov penal colony No. 15, Bondarenko assesses his health as not having undergone any significant change. “The right leg is the same as before the operation; it’s true to say that my left leg no longer hurts. My right arm is giving me pain,” writes the politician.

He thinks that he and other political prisoners “will be held at least until New Year.” “They just do not know what to do with us. They would like to throttle us, but they are in the ‘centre of Europe’,” writes Bondarenko.

“Things can’t go on like this for long. People are not cattle. Self-esteem will awake in Belarusians. I think that the need for change is acutely recognised by many people in power. We are in hope and better times are approaching,” Bondarenko says in the letter.

The politician is also grateful for the many birthday greetings he has received, in particular from the first leader of independent Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich, and also sends greetings to “all clever and active people.”

Dmitrii Bondarenko’s letter is dated 29 September. According to the franking, it reached Mogilev on 5 October.