How sports became a ‘battleground for reprisals’ in Belarus

Olympic athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya joined a group of defecting Belarusian sportspeople when she spurned her homeland.

Alexander Opeikin led one of the most successful handball clubs in ex-Soviet Belarus. These days, he is a fugitive wanted for “harming national security”, living in exile in Ukraine. In 2012, he founded the Vityaz club in the nation of 9.5 million people, whose President Alexander Lukashenko champions sports as an ideological pillar of his decades-long rule.