It's the European country that jails journalists, presidential candidates and human rights activists, including last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski.
Belarus, under the dictatorship of 68-year-old Alexander Lukashenko, isn't just a nation that crushes freedom at home – its leader enables war and destruction abroad.
It was from Belarus that Vladimir Putin launched his attack on Ukraine's capital Kyiv in February last year, and the war would have been very different if Mr Lukashenko had not been able to rig his country's election in 2020.
"Maybe this war wouldn't have happened at all," Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, tells the ABC from her exiled home in neighbouring Lithuania.
"Lukashenko provided our land for launching missiles and allowed Putin to attack Kyiv in the shortest way possible."
Ms Tsikhanouskaya ran against Mr Lukashenko in the 2020 election and considers herself to be the true leader of Belarus.
"People knew that all elections in Belarus that Lukashenko held were always fraudulent.
"[In 2020] our IT specialists invented a system, of an alternative counting of the voices to check the results of the elections," she says.
Ms Tsikhanouskaya says those platforms showed she won 56 per cent of the vote.
Mr Lukashenko, who has ruled over Belarus as its first and only President since 1994, declared victory after claiming he got over 80 per cent of the vote.
Hundreds of thousands of Belarusians protested against the result, and Mr Lukashenko and his balaclava-wearing security forces in the KGB cracked down on the protests in a violent manner.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights found that 37,000 protesters were detained across a 12-month period either side of the election.
It claimed that "torture and ill-treatment were widespread and systemic" and that peaceful protests were subject to a "massive and violent crackdown".
Lukashenko's debt to repay
A group of former police, security and justice officials known as BYPOL found that there was widespread use of Russian weapons and ammunition by the Belarusian KGB when it cracked down on those peaceful protests.
The help from Moscow didn't stop there. The Russian president promised Belarus a $1.5 billion loan to help avoid an economic crisis, as well as "comprehensive security assistance" in dealing with the protesters.
But, the more Mr Putin helped prop up Mr Lukashenko's rule, the greater the debt he owed to Moscow.
When Mr Putin wanted to use Belarus as a base from which to invade Ukraine in 2022, Mr Lukashenko rolled over and handed his country's sovereignty to Russia.
"In 2020, Lukashenko managed to stay in power only thanks to violence and thanks to the support of Putin and he had to show his loyalty," Ms Tsikhanouskaya says.
"He understands that he's fully dependent on the support of Putin and he doesn't have any other allies."
In February, a leaked document from Mr Putin's executive office showed Russian plans to fully take over Belarus by 2030.
Earlier this week, the Russian president confirmed a deal had been struck with Lukashenko's government to station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil.
"We are seeing a creeping occupation by Russia," says Ms Tsikhanouskaya, "They are occupying our military, cultural, media, and economic spheres.
"Lukashenko himself is selling our country to Kremlin."
The 40-year-old believes that overthrowing Belarus's dictator would "accelerate victory in Ukraine".
But what has been happening inside her country remains largely unknown in the west.
"We have to remind the world why Belarus is important," says Ms Tsikhanouskaya.
For Tsikhanouskaya, the issue is personal too
The Viasna Human Rights Centre estimates that there are around 1,500 political prisoners in Belarus. The Opposition movement believes the figure could be closer to 5,000.
One of those political prisoners is Ms Tsikhanouskaya's husband.
Sergei Tikhanovsky was a blogger, YouTuber and democracy activist when he decided to run for president in 2020.
As his popularity grew, and it became clear he was beginning to pose a threat to Mr Lukashenko, he was arrested.
"He was travelling from city to city, asking how people live, what do they think about the government? And he became very popular and of course it frightened Lukashenko and he put him in prison," Ms Tsikhanouskaya says.
When he was jailed, she decided to run in her husband's place. One of her policies was to release all political prisoners.
The day after the election was declared in Mr Lukashenko's favour, Ms Tsikhanouskaya went to the Central Election Commission to protest against the elections not being free or fair.
She says she was soon taken aside by two highly ranked KGB officers and held by force for several hours.
"They said you have to leave Belarus, otherwise you will be in prison for many, many years," she says.
It was extraordinarily difficult decision. Ms Tsikhanouskaya didn't want to betray her people or be separated from her two children, including one who has special needs.
"At that moment, I think that my internal mother won that battle," she says.
"I was afraid that people would see me as betrayer. But after I fled, I heard so many words of support from Belarusians who were left.
"They told me, 'We are fighting there. You fight where you are. Do what you can'.
"It inspired me and gave me the internal strength to revive, and to continue to work in the international arena."
Ms Tsikhanouskaya's husband is currently serving a prison sentence of 19-and-a-half years for inciting hatred and social unrest. She says the conditions for political prisoners in Belarus are inhumane.
"They are treated much, much worse than ordinary criminals. They are deprived of normal food, water, money transfers and parcels.
"And they are constantly humiliated, physically and morally. They are kept in cold punishment cells for months in a row."
As part of the deprivation, Ms Tsikhanouskaya and her husband can't write to each other. All she has are the letters that go back and forth between her husband and their children.
Their seven-year-old daughter Agnia draws vivid, colourful pictures for her father and sends them to him in prison.
"I always explain to my children that their father lives in an atmosphere of dullness, that everything is grey around him, so I ask Agnia to put more colours in her drawings," she says.
"My daughter is always drawing the whole family, even if we were at a place with only the three of us, her daddy is always present in the picture."
On March 6, the courts in Belarus sentenced Ms Tsikhanouskaya in absentia to 15 years in prison on charges that included conspiring to overthrow the government.
She says her court appointed lawyer did not contact her once during the trial and did not respond to requests to review the case files.
The most dangerous country in Europe for journalists
There are at least 33 journalists currently locked up inside Belarusian prisons.
Reporters without Borders describes Belarus as Europe's most dangerous country for journalists.
Iryna Novik fled to Lithuania in June 2021, a week after she was released from prison.
Her crime, in the eyes of the Lukashenko regime, is so preposterous it is scarcely believable.
Ms Novik, was working as an editor at the news website HrodnaLife on the day that Belarusian air traffic control told a pilot flying a Ryanair plane from Athens to Vilnius that there had been a bomb threat and the flight needed to land in Minsk.
The incident would later be condemned by the US Justice Department as an act of international aircraft piracy.
Belarusian authorities wanted the flight diverted so they could arrest the anti-government blogger Roman Protasevich who was on board.
Mr Protasevich was arrested, detained and is currently facing trial. He and two others were accused of over 1,500 crimes including insulting the president and setting up a terrorist organisation.
When the story broke, HrodnaLife ran an article and Ms Novik became collateral damage.
"All that was necessary to imprison me was a photo of a Ryanair airplane," she tells the ABC.
The photo that accompanied the story included a watermark of Nexta – a media outlet run from Poland that helped co-ordinate protests against the Lukashenko presidency. The Supreme Court of Belarus had designated it a terrorist organisation.
As one of the editors, Ms Novik was held responsible for publishing the photo with the forbidden watermark. It was only up for five hours before it was taken down.
She was charged with the "distribution of extremist materials, containing calls to extremist activity," and fined around $400. She left the country soon after.
"Practically speaking, nowadays it's impossible to be a journalist in Belarus," she says.
Ms Novik describes the conditions she experienced in prison as inhumane. She was placed in solitary confinement and denied medical treatment.
She despairs at the thought of so many of her colleagues being imprisoned, some of them for up to 15 years.
"Every minute spent there significantly damages a person's health and it destroys my colleague's talents," she says.
"The realisation that I can't do anything to help them is very hard for me."
It's a feeling that is familiar to Barys Haretski. He is the deputy chairman of the Belarusian Association of Journalists and also fled Belarus in 2021.
"We were forced to leave when the regime searched our offices for the second time," he tells the ABC.
"If we didn't leave — we would have been imprisoned like our colleagues from the human rights organisation Viasna."
As we spoke outside the Belarus Embassy in Vilnius, Mr Haretski noticed cameras from inside the building begin to film us. He is used to being monitored by Belarus's security services.
In February, the KGB designated the Belarusian Association of Journalists as an extremist organisation. Being a member of the journalist's union in Belarus is akin to be a part of a terrorist group.
"Every person in Belarus, who calls himself a member of the "Belarusian Association of Journalists is now at risk of being imprisoned for up to 6 years because of his connection with an extremist organisation," Mr Haretski says.
"All of them are still our friends and of course, we'll try to help them in any way possible."
Fighting back from exile
Ms Tsikhanouskaya believes Mr Lukashenko's grip on power is much more vulnerable than it appears. She recently visited the US, UK and a number of EU countries, urging them to keep up the pressure on the country through sanctions.
She and her exiled colleagues have formed a United Transitional Cabinet, an alternative government that is readying itself to take over if and when the regime crumbles.
Ms Tsikhanouskaya says she is inspired by political prisoners, like her husband, who are willing her on from inside the cold dark cells in Belarus.
"They are the main source of my inspiration. The reason that I'm not giving up," she says.
"Every morning when you wake up and you think that you're so tired, you're so exhausted, you're sometimes frustrated, but you think of those people now in cells. They are in a very difficult situation, and they believe in us."
Within Belarus, a partisan movement has sprung up to try to derail Mr Putin's co-opting of their country as a staging post for his war on Ukraine.
In March last year around 80 acts of sabotage were carried out on the rail network to try to stop Russian troops entering Ukraine.
An army of tens of thousands of volunteers have continued to provide key intelligence to Ukrainian officials about troop and equipment movements inside Belarus.
A recent drone attack at a military air base near Minsk helped damage a Russian surveillance plane.
It was a move that embarrassed Mr Lukashenko and will keep Russian forces on their toes inside Belarus.
In a speech during her visit to London, Ms Tsikhanouskaya cited the bravery of Belarusians who have been sent to jail for trying to undermine Russia's war efforts.
"The youngest of them, Uladzimir Auramtsau, a fitness trainer from Babruysk, is 28 years old. One of Lukashenko's judges sent him to prison for 22 years, because he prevented Russian troops from killing innocent Ukrainian citizens.
"Uladzimir didn't harm anyone and saved many lives. Now he is in jail. He is not due to be released until he is 50.
"But I firmly believe that he'll be free much sooner. So too will Belarus."
Mr Lukashenko, the so called "strongman" of Belarus is on one hand fearful of Mr Putin, and on the other hand scared of democracy, dissent and the will of the people.
Belarus's leader in-waiting wants the West's help now to end his reign of terror.
"Create as much pressure on Lukashenko as possible," she urges, "and help the Belarusian people build a civil society to survive, to continue the work.
"Without a democratic Belarus there will be a constant threat to Ukraine, to our Western neighbours.
"The war cannot be over until Belarus is free."
