Natallia Kaliehava told about helping Belarusian refugees, her family, her attitude towards Tsikhanouskaya. And explained who "beavers" and "hares" are

In Vilnius, there is a house that has long been simply called "The Castle" in the Belarusian community. With sharp roofs, high windows, a round fountain at the entrance, and large flags on the facade: Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian. Below – a large inscription Dapamoga.

Natallia Kaliehava drives up to the Castle in her car. In a light trench coat, with a short haircut, quick and precise in her movements, she immediately enters the yard as if returning to a place that constantly operates on her inner engine.

Павялічыць

She doesn't even properly enter the house before she starts seeing everything: who is standing where, who is carrying what, who needs whom.

Inside, the Castle does not at all resemble a sterile social institution. In the foyer – orange walls, leather sofas, a lamp in the mirror ceiling, tiled floor, boxes, belongings, photographs, flags, trifles that accumulate only in a lively home. Previously, this was the house of a Roma baron, so the interior partially retained the corresponding colorful style.

Kaliehava walks through the rooms: she greets everyone she meets by name, smiles, asks something, instructs something.

Павялічыць

On the first floor – the kitchen. Three women are preparing dinner there.

— I'm dreaming about how to get shoes for Lioksha here, — says mentor Volha. — It's hard for him to walk in what he has.

— You need to write in the mentors' chat right now, — Natallia immediately responds. — "People, shoes needed."

Nearby is Aksana. Natallia explains: she is the mother of a former political prisoner, one of the keepers of the Castle, who is responsible "for our bellies." The kitchen smells of food, coffee, and a certain domestic care.

— And do you know who "beavers" and "bunnies" are? — they suddenly ask me.

— No.

— Oh, well, you'll find out soon, — the girls smile mysteriously.

Natallia constantly switches from one task to another, but completely controls everything happening around her. We go up to the second floor.

— How many people do you have here now?

— It varies. Now 15. But sometimes it's up to 30, which is already uncomfortable. Optimal is 20.

We enter the meeting room. Performances, living room gatherings, psychological sessions take place here. Sometimes, Kaliehava says, people also live here.

The large hall looks strange and solemn: blue walls, high ceiling painting, round decor on the floor — and in the middle of all this, a huge camouflage net stretched out, for Ukraine. As if the war had entered the former palace and remained here as daily handiwork.

Павялічыць

Suddenly, a male voice is heard:

— Natasha! Hello!

The man we meet in the corridor is Mikalai Kuliashou, a former customs officer and political prisoner. Just as we arrived, he is on his way to a psychotherapist. In the Castle, psychological help is as much a part of daily life as the kitchen or a bed.

— We won't go to the third floor, the guys live there, — says Natallia.

In one of the rooms – a place for activities. Massages are done here, a girl who does manicures comes. On the walls – drawings. Among them, a portrait of Kaliehava herself.

— Is this your portrait?

— Yes. I don't like that. The cult of personality is not my thing. But I accept it with gratitude as the creativity of our former beneficiaries.

In the painting, Natallia is still a brunette. She holds a bunny in her hands, behind her are beavers, storks, a fox. These are not just animals. "Stork", for example, is a guy who crossed the border by paraglider. "Beaver" is a person who crosses the border by swimming across a river. "Bunny" runs through the forests. The guy who drew all this is now at war.

Павялічыць

Next to it – an icon of Saint Panteleimon. It was gifted by one of the refugees who later flew to America.

We enter a room with a large round table. Natallia shows a guestbook with photos of guests and meetings held at the Castle. Viktor Babaryka and Pavel Seviarynets have been here, and guests leave their signatures in this book. Natallia does not have her own office – she says this almost in passing. And it seems true: her office is the entire Castle.

Павялічыць

"Either accept the rules, or leave"

Natallia Kaliehava moved to Lithuania back in 2000. She is originally from Minsk, by education a chemist. She graduated from the Chemistry Faculty of BSU, studied in postgraduate school, worked at the Institute of Experimental Botany of the Academy of Sciences. It seemed her life would be connected with science. But the 1990s began:

— I never thought I would go into business. I remember a friend once suggested: "Let's go, let's trade flowers." And I replied: "No, that's not for me. I'm a scientist."

Life decided otherwise. The family already had a child, and the scientific salary was not enough. One day, an acquaintance called and said that a whole wagon of fabric was going to waste in Lithuania. Natallia already had relatives there: her sister had married a Lithuanian in 1984 and moved to Vilnius. That's how she ended up in business.

— After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all connections fell apart. Somewhere warehouses were overflowing with goods, and somewhere there was a catastrophic shortage. And your task was simply to find out who needed whom. I was such an intermediary who knew everything. I remember my theoretical physics professor once came to me when I was already in business and said: "Do you know what the main value of a university education is? We don't care what problem to solve." And it's true. You immediately see the whole scheme. The brain works differently.

She remembers her first serious earnings down to the smallest detail:

— It was the early nineties. We went to the savings bank to get money, and they brought us a whole diplomat full of banknotes. My partner at the time and I walked out of the bank, reached the Dynamo stadium, sat on a bench, and just stayed silent. We sat with that diplomat and thought: "What are we going to do with all this now?" At that moment, I felt for the first time: life can be different.

Later there were fabric supplies, work with Milavitsa, production projects, a sawmill. One of the first successful projects was the business with Haryzont televisions. Natallia bought incomplete televisions, which were sent to Smolensk, where they were manually brought to a finished state. After that, the televisions were sold, and by the mid-1990s, this was a very profitable direction.

— For a few more years, I worked part-time, trying to combine business with science. But gradually it became clear that business required more and more time. I was twenty-four, I had to take care of my son alone. And by the age of twenty-eight, my business was quite firmly on its feet. Then I already clearly understood that I had made the right choice.

The business developed successfully, but, according to Natallia, the mid-1990s became a turning point.

She recalls a family story. In 1994, her cousin, a successful businessman, almost threw a man down the stairs who came to a meeting of entrepreneurs and started shouting that "businessmen are leeches on the body of the state." The conflict was then averted, and a few months later, friends called her cousin: "Remember that man? You shouldn't have wanted to throw him down the stairs. Now he is our president." Soon he urgently left Belarus. Today he is no longer alive, but, according to Natallia, he believed until the end: Belarus can still change.

— Before Lukashenka, everything developed very quickly. But after that, everything changed. I saw how people with whom we started business together disappeared one after another. Someone ended up in prison, someone left, someone submitted to Lukashenka, and someone disappeared without a trace. I understood: either accept these rules or leave.

She chose the latter. Her future husband convinced her to move to Lithuania. The move was not easy:

— I loved Minsk very much. For me, leaving was like leaving my own skin.

In Vilnius, Natallia first engaged in genealogy, spent hours working in archives, researching her family history. Then she sold her apartment in Minsk and, together with her husband, an architectural designer, opened a network of apartments for people coming to Lithuania. These very apartments, twenty years later, would unexpectedly become the first refuge for Belarusians fleeing repression.

Until 2020, Natallia Kaliehava was almost not involved in Belarusian public life:

— When I first left, I was very emotional. I told my friends: "How can you live under Lukashenka?" And they replied: "You are abroad now. It's easy for you to speculate. But we have to live here." After that conversation, I simply shut my mouth. I decided that I had no right to teach people if I myself had left.

For almost two decades, Natallia Kaliehava lived her own life: family, business, friends, Lithuania. But everything changed in the summer of 2020.

How "Dapamoga" began

When the presidential campaign began in Belarus, Natallia admits that she initially didn't expect anything unusual:

— When Siarhei Tsikhanouski was imprisoned, I thought: well, another candidate has been imprisoned. I even told my husband: "Nothing is changing in Belarus, everything is according to the old scheme."

But then she saw the queues at Viktor Babaryka's pickets and how Belarusians helped each other:

— I didn't care who these people were supporting. For me, the main thing was something else – they came out at all. And I suddenly saw that sincere, real Minsk that I once loved so much.

On August 9, she went to vote at the Belarusian embassy in Vilnius. The queue stretched for almost ten hours, but everything was so slow that only 120 people voted. About a thousand people could not vote, some of them had specially come from Klaipeda.

— We brought people water, pizza, supported each other, conducted our own poll on who voted for whom. And when I opened the news the next day and saw "80% for Lukashenka," my first thought was: "What kind of nonsense is this?" It was such an obvious lie that it was simply impossible to believe.

After the first killings of protesters, Belarusians began to come to the Vilnius embassy with flowers and candles. When the police asked them to disperse, Natallia herself went to talk to the law enforcement officers:

— I said: if a plane crashes somewhere, people also bring flowers to embassies. This is not politics, this is human compassion.

As a result, Lithuanian police advised obtaining a permit from the municipality. That's how "Varta svyatla" (Guard of Light) appeared, which operates to this day: Belarusians light lamps near portraits of victims of Lukashenka's regime and fallen Belarusian soldiers in Ukraine near the Belarusian embassy in Vilnius.

But this was only the beginning:

— In late August 2020, we were called by Belarusians who wanted to come to Lithuania. They said: "We are being offered to ask for asylum, but we don't want to. We think this is temporary. We just need to wait it out in Lithuania."

At that time, Lithuanian law already allowed humanitarian entry, but the mechanism for its application did not yet exist. A coincidence helped. After one of the rallies, journalists introduced Natallia to the leadership of the Migration Department. Soon, those same Belarusians called her: they were finally allowed into the country. It later turned out that the head of the border outpost had found them himself through Facebook:

— He remembered the people he had been forced to refuse, found them and wrote: "Come, I will let you through." For me, this is a very characteristic story about Lithuanians.

Soon, at the initiative of the Chief Commissioner of Police, Renatas Požėla, representatives of the border service, the Migration Department, customs, and other state institutions gathered at one table. Together they developed a mechanism according to which the humanitarian corridor began to operate.

By the end of 2020, about 320 Belarusians had passed through "Dapamoga" alone, according to Kaliehava, using this route:

— Back then, people still didn't want to ask for political asylum. Almost everyone hoped that in a few weeks or months they would be able to return home. It seemed to me that my role in this would be limited to rallies and such support. And then one day the phone rang. My assistant Natallia said: "Natallia Ivanawna, we have Belarusian refugees here." I didn't even immediately understand what to answer. I only remember my first reaction: "And what am I supposed to do with this now?" And she asked: "Please help them..."

There were three adults and two children. They crossed the border and found themselves in some house 90 km from Vilnius, where there was no electricity or water. At first, Natallia thought of simply renting them her apartments at a minimal cost:

— I went to pick them up myself, brought them, settled them in Vilnius. I asked how much money they had left. They told me: two hundred euros for the whole family. And then I said: "Okay, live for free for now."

A few days later, her phone wouldn't stop ringing. Women whose sons were released from Akrestsina passed her number to each other, called and pleaded: "Natallia, save my child." That's how what would later become the organization "Dapamoga" began.

Павялічыць

"I am ready to kneel before them"

Although mass escapes from Belarus no longer look like they did in 2020, people continue to seek help. Natallia repeats several times: there are no random people in this system:

— Now the verification is very serious. People know each other, can vouch for each other. If an unfamiliar person contacts me, I always clarify who gave them my contact.

Of course, she does not disclose the details of this work:

— There are things that are better left unsaid. It's a matter of people's safety.

But about Lithuanian border guards, she speaks with great gratitude. On the eve of our meeting, they rescued a Belarusian who had a diabetic coma. Similar stories happened before:

— There was a man who fell through the ice. Border guards, medics rescued him. When after this they tell me that Lithuanians don't like Belarusians, I simply cannot agree with that. I am ready to kneel before them.

One room that became a Castle

Initially, the refugees lived in the apartments that Natallia and her husband once opened for tourists. Very quickly, a team began to gather around her:

— One day, girls from my commercial company called me: "Natallia Ivanawna, why aren't you taking us?" I replied: "Because I have nothing to pay you with. And everything here is done for free." And they just said: "Well, we'll work for free too."

Many of them remain close to this day:

— There were three Natallias. We jokingly called ourselves "the three owls," because at night we practically didn't leave our phones. Some of them are now working on other projects, but still continue to help "Dapamoga." We are still together.

Volunteers and mentors began to gather around the organization. Natallia is sure: without this team, "Dapamoga" simply wouldn't exist.

— I wouldn't have done anything myself. "Dapamoga" is not Natallia Kaliehava. It's a team, volunteers, and mentors. I, perhaps, only managed to gather everyone together. And they did everything else. They came up with the Welcome Pack — the first set of essential items and products that a person receives immediately upon arrival. They met people at the border, helped them settle in, supported them in the first few days. Everything rests on such people.

Natallia says that "Dapamoga" has one rule that has never changed: if a person asks for help, they will receive it.

In 2021, her husband bought an old house in Vilnius that once belonged to a Roma baron and was being sold after his death. Originally, there were completely different plans for this house:

— My husband bought this house hoping that I would take care of it, turn it into a hotel. This was our joint business, joint money. He thought this house would distract me from Belarusian affairs, that I would switch to renovations, clients, a new project. But I asked: "Give me at least one room. People need somewhere to sleep."

Thus began the history of the Castle. The house was in a dilapidated state; it had been empty for a long time after the death of its former owner:

— When we bought it, trees were growing right through the asphalt. We didn't do any major renovations, we just gradually restored what was necessary. One room, then another, then a third. Somewhere we repainted the walls, somewhere people brought furniture. The house was literally restored by collective effort; Belarusians themselves did it.

Natallia smiles when she recalls how it all happened:

— At first, one guy lived here. We jokingly called him a ghost. He later went to Ukraine. Then another person appeared. Then a third. I didn't wake up thinking: "I will create a humanitarian organization." It's just that every day another person arrived. Someone needed a roof over their head. Someone needed to find a lawyer. Someone — medicine. I couldn't tell a person: "Wait, I'll think about whether I want to do this now." How can I say that when he is already standing in front of me.

She pauses for a few seconds.

— And at some point, you realize that you can no longer go back.

— Why?

— Because you already know their names.

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And the house, which was supposed to become a hotel, finally changed its purpose.

— My husband is a citizen of Lithuania. And Lithuanians then all strongly supported Ukraine. He said: "Well, I guess we won't be making a hotel here for a long time now. Okay, do charity."

Meanwhile, Belarusian volunteers came to Natallia:

— They said: "Natallia Ivanawna, we will help Ukrainians." I replied: "I have no strength or money." They asked: "Can we do it ourselves?" I said: "The whole house is for you." People who had recently been helped themselves began to help others. They already knew how the humanitarian corridor worked, how to organize logistics, how to meet a person, where to find a car, how to accommodate people. I just watched and thought: now this is no longer my story. This is the story of Belarusians.

Павялічыць

"We all lacked empathy"

Alongside hundreds of stories of help, there was another side. In January 2021, a public campaign was launched against Natallia Kaliehava, accusing her of profiting from Belarusians. She is convinced: this was a targeted attack. She attributes the main role in it to the ex-head of Bysol, Andrei Stryzhak.

— Articles came out claiming that I was a Belarusian swindler, that I allegedly took money from people, even though I said I helped for free. This affected both the family business and personal life. My husband and I lost about 320,000 euros because of this story.

Over time, she was able to restore normal relations with some representatives of Bysol.

— It doesn't hurt anymore. I'm just stating it as a fact. No questions — we sit at a round table, we talk. If people want to continue helping, why shouldn't we do it together?

She speaks calmly about the lost money. What was more painful, she says, was something else:

— We were just beginning to build trust in Lithuania. And it turned out that not only I was slandered. Lithuanians don't know who Natallia Kaliehava is. They simply think: if Belarusians fight among themselves like this, why help them? There was a wave of distrust. But in the same year, another moment occurred. On my birthday, Belarusians from the diaspora collected 600 euros. Today it seems like a small amount. But back then, this money allowed us to help people for a few more months. For me, it was a sign: "We believe you."

And five years later, for Natallia's jubilee in spring 2026, Belarusians collected about 12,000 euros as a gift for a retreat for former female political prisoners in the Canary Islands.

— I learned to separate the action from the person. If a person makes a mistake, it doesn't mean they are bad. But, honestly, we all really lacked empathy then. We could have just sat down at a table and talked.

She reflects for a minute:

— I really don't want Belarusians to continue destroying each other. We still have to live together.

"The Castle can already live without me"

Over five years, "Dapamoga" has ceased to be Natallia Kaliehava's project. She speaks of this, it seems, with even greater joy than anything else. Recently, she had to leave Lithuania for almost a month and a half:

— And do you know what? The Castle continued to live. People were admitted, help worked, everything was organized. For me, this is probably one of the most important results over these years. The system already works without me, and that's good.

Today, the Castle is no longer just a house where one can spend the night. Here, they help with documents, finding work and housing, and adapting to life in Lithuania. Each new person is assigned a mentor — a Belarusian who has already walked this path and can help the "newcomers" take their first steps.

— I don't really like the word "shelter." It narrows the meaning too much. We are more of a help center and a community, — says Natallia.

Through "Dapamoga", according to her, about 2400 people have already passed.

— The first month a person lives for free. If they want to stay after that, they start partially contributing to utility costs.

— But this is not a hostel where you can live indefinitely at a low cost. If you no longer need to worry about where to sleep tonight and how to pay for rent, help others. Come to our events or weave camouflage nets for Ukraine, help new refugees, support the community however you can. Because someone once did it for you.

However, she adds, in the first days after arrival, no one demands anything from the person:

— Sometimes people arrive after prison, after interrogations, after a long journey. They simply have no strength. First, you need to let the person sleep, eat, and understand that they are safe. People are different. Some get involved immediately. Some move on and never reappear. I don't like dividing people into good and bad. Everyone has their own path.

"We don't live on grants"

Over all these years, "Dapamoga" has not received a single grant:

— We tried to apply several times, but we didn't get anything. They say that a bad characteristic remained about us after the hate campaign of 2021.

The Castle continues to exist thanks to the Kaliehava family's own funds, donations, and the help of Belarusians themselves:

— I definitely wouldn't want us to be funded for salaries. It's one thing if they help you pay for utilities. It's quite another when an organization starts to live entirely on grants. The Lithuanians I work with don't live on funds. They have jobs, their own ways of earning money, and charity for them is truly charity, not a way to earn money. This approach is close to me.

However, she admits that a few years ago there were moments when she didn't know how to pay the bills:

— In 2022, we accumulated utility debt — about sixteen thousand euros. Gas and electricity prices sharply increased then. We simply couldn't keep up with these expenses. But we managed to cope. Sometimes people think that the house where "Dapamoga" lives was given to us by the state. No, it's our family's property. My husband bought this house at market value. He even jokes that along with the house, he also lost his wife — she completely immersed herself in Belarusian affairs.

Natallia speaks of her husband with particular warmth:

— He sometimes calls himself a misanthrope. But he endures all of this. Recently, he stopped by the Castle on business. They fed him solyanka here, he lingered, talked with people for a long time. I just smiled afterwards: "Well, is it drawing you in?"

Natallia sometimes thinks how little would be needed for the Castle to feel more secure:

— We don't need to pay rent, which reduces expenses. And if every person we helped transferred us at least ten euros a month, we could do much more. But life isn't arranged that way. Instead, there are people who, after a few years, come and say: "You once helped me. Now it's my turn to help others." And this, probably, is the most valuable thing.

"Before, prison united them. Now they have the Canaries"

Natallia Kaliehava calls the retreat in the Canary Islands for former female political prisoners in Belarus a special and very important initiative for her. In the spring of 2026, the first group spent several weeks there. A psychologist worked with the women; there were yoga classes, hikes, excursions, and simply time by the ocean.

Isn't that too expensive? Natallia replies that the choice of location was much more pragmatic than it might seem:

— When you say "Canaries," it sounds pretentious. But for Europeans, the Canaries are one of the most inexpensive vacation options. We invested approximately 20,000 euros: this is for 15-20 people, tickets, accommodation, food, excursions, car rentals. A villa for that many people cost about five thousand. I can't imagine how such a monthly retreat for so many people could be organized in Lithuania for that money.

Part of the expenses were cut thanks to volunteers: the psychologist worked for free, the yoga instructor also didn't charge money, and Natallia's son, who works as a chef, helped with cooking.

Natallia knows the Canary Islands well — she has been going there with her husband since 2012. Therefore, she was well aware of the local logistics, prices, where to rent accommodation and cars. And rumors that the group allegedly lived in her own villa, she comments with irony:

— Unfortunately, we don't have our own villa there. As someone said that I rented out my villa — well, I would be very happy if I actually had one.

But the main thing for Natallia was not the economics of the project. She wanted to physically pull the women out of an environment where everything continued to remind them of prison, repression, and emigration:

— The most important thing I needed was for the girls to detach from this story, for us to rewrite it. And we succeeded. Before the retreat, they basically had one strong common negative experience — prison. And suddenly, they had another common story — the Canaries. Swimming next to whales in the open ocean, hiking, a trip to Teide, dancing on the shore. A different language around, different nature, the endless ocean. All of this heals. I'm telling you about them now and realize that I've grown to love them very much.

A small network of Belarusian solidarity gradually emerged around the retreat: Belarusians were found on the islands who offered free photo sessions to the participants, helped with procedures, and simply joined their lives. And it is precisely this, not the resort vacation itself, that Natallia considers the main result of the initiative.

Павялічыць

"My relationship with Belarusians is very similar to marriage"

From the outside, it might seem that Natallia Kaliehava's life consists of an endless string of problems: people arriving at the Castle, a constant search for money, conflicts, responsibility for others. Why, after all this, does she continue to do it? She doesn't even hesitate with the answer.

— It is service. If you are once, in a good sense, poisoned by charity, you can no longer live otherwise. It's all about love.

Kaliehava says she was never very religious in the usual sense of the word. But she has always been a person of faith:

— I believe that there are no random people in life. If a person came to you, it means it had to happen. And after that, it's hard to pretend you didn't notice them.

She smiles:

— My husband sometimes gets angry. My family too. But they already know: you can't change me.

Despite years in charity, Natallia still calls herself a business person:

— I know how to make money. But after everything that happened, simply going back and only doing business is no longer interesting to me. I am 60 years old; the older you get, the more you realize that you can't take anything material with you.

Then suddenly remembers her son:

— He also left business and became a chef. And I think: he also serves people — he feeds them. Because service is doing your job with love.

I ask if there are moments when she wants to give it all up. She smiles.

— There is tiredness. But there is no desire to stop. My relationship with Belarusians is very similar to marriage. At first there is great love. Then comes daily life, fatigue, irritation. You see not only the good, but also what you don't like. And at some point you have to answer yourself the question: why are you still together? And if it's love, not calculation, you will stay with that person. It's the same for me with Belarusians.

She admits that sometimes her husband suggests selling part of their property, changing something in their life:

— I always reply: you can sell everything. Except the Castle.

— Why?

— As long as Belarus needs it, I simply cannot. At the same time, I want Belarusians to learn not to wait for someone else to solve their problems. If we want a free Belarus, we need to learn to take responsibility ourselves.

"I have normal relations with the Office, despite everything"

Dapamoga has accumulated quite a few questions for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's Office. The main one is why democratic forces' structures have for a long time almost not dealt with the daily problems of Belarusians in Lithuania.

— When they were asked: "How do you help Belarusians in Lithuania?", they replied: "We don't have the resources for that. There's 'Dapamoga'."

According to Natallia, the Office did not sufficiently protect the interests of Belarusians before the Lithuanian authorities. She recalls a conversation with Franak Viačorka, when Belarusians had problems with migration issues. He said that the Office communicates with migration services and Lithuanian politicians, but Natallia considered such work insufficient.

Kaliehava's separate comment is related to the events of 2021 and the scandal around "Dapamoga." In her opinion, Tsikhanouskaya, Viačorka, and other influential representatives of democratic structures could have tried to bring the conflicting parties together at one table.

— That's how it happens in the diaspora: some quarrel begins between good people. And when we sit down at a round table, a lot of issues get resolved. That scandal had a very bad impact on all Belarusians. Everything could have been done differently.

— I have normal relations with the Office, despite everything. Sviatlana visited "The Castle" once. And after she came, we lost a certain amount of donations. People probably decided that she was supporting us now. Talks began that Sviatlana had given me almost twenty thousand. But the Office never helped us financially.

Despite all the accumulated questions, Natallia does not want to join the critics' attacks on Tsikhanouskaya. She emphasizes: criticizing specific actions and decisions is possible and necessary, but for her, there is a line between criticism and collective bullying.

— For example, it doesn't bother me that Sviatlana travels the world. I'm not interested in her money — I don't finance her. Now only the lazy don't write, allegedly, Sviatlana stole money, or something else. There's always something to criticize, but it should be healthy criticism for the benefit. And when everyone starts ganging up on one person — I don't like that. I even rather want to help in such a situation.

"Another shelter might not be needed. It would be better to create a real pension fund."

Natallia Kaliehava developed a special relationship with BT propagandist Ksenia Liebiedzieva. Natallia jokes that she has become her peculiar "fan": she follows her activities and regularly mentions her in her materials.

— She constantly makes films about me, follows me everywhere she can. But I'm even curious to watch her, because sometimes she provides useful information. You watch and think: "Here, you need to be more careful."

Once again, Natallia caught Liebiedzieva's attention after the death of Belarusian journalist and blogger Uladzimir Usier. He died on December 6, 2025, in Białystok. Usier's last months of life were difficult: he had serious health problems, and shortly before his death, he was detained in Poland on suspicion of espionage. Due to his health condition, the court did not take him into custody, and after the hospital, he lived at the Caritas center.

— I knew him very little. He came to us for food a few times. And I felt very sorry for him, — Natallia recalls.

After Usier's death, Kaliehava expressed her condolences. At that moment, she was in Tenerife, already preparing for a retreat for former female political prisoners: she was visiting villas and planning the logistics of the upcoming trip.

This contrast was used by Liebiedzieva. In a propaganda report, Natallia was shown against a backdrop of palm trees, contrasting her situation with the fate of the deceased Usier. In state television materials, this turned into the phrase "For some, the Canaries, for some, the morgue."

— Thanks again, Ksenia Liebiedzieva — she noticed the palm trees. Yes, I was in Tenerife then. We make these trips with our own money. It would be strange if I didn't have money. What, if I have money, I must necessarily give it all away to zero and not travel anywhere myself? I have a husband, we have our own money. I love the Canaries and go there twice a year.

But behind Usier's story, Natallia sees a more serious problem. In her opinion, the Belarusian community has learned to provide emergency help to those fleeing repression, but has not yet created a system of long-term support for people who have already found themselves in emigration and cannot cope independently due to age, illness, or difficult financial situation:

— Those people who pulled him out should have taken care of him. I am for what Babaryka spoke about — for a mutual aid fund, for somehow solving pension issues. No one in our country is dealing with this. Another shelter might not be needed. It would be better to create some real pension fund.

"My grandmother practically ran her own Telegram channel"

Natallia Kaliehava says she never understood jokes about the "patient Belarusian" who will endure everything and get used to everything. She was raised by completely different stories.

Even as a child, she spent hours listening to her grandmother, who told stories about partisan Minsk, the underground, people saved during the occupation, and about her own family, which survived repression.

— I always knew my family's history. That's why I could never agree when they said that Belarusians are people who just "endured and got used to it." No. For me, Belarusians have always been very brave. Non-aggressive — yes. But brave.

During the occupation, her grandmother secretly listened to the radio, although it was punishable by execution, rewrote the news by hand, and passed it on to others.

— I joke now that my grandmother practically ran her own Telegram channel. She didn't think about heroism and simply did what she thought was right.

When one of her friends came saying that the Germans had taken her daughter, the grandmother found an acquaintance who worked with passports and helped save the girl. According to family recollections, she managed to save more than one Jewish family from the Minsk ghetto this way.

Repressions were also not kept silent in the house. Natallia's great-grandfather was arrested in 1928 after a few critical words about Soviet power. Relatives long thought he had been exiled to Kazakhstan. Only many years later, when the family gained access to his archival file, it turned out: he died in prison just three days after his arrest.

— We didn't harbor anger. I was simply told the truth from childhood and allowed to draw my own conclusions.

That is why, Kaliehava admits, the photographs of beaten Belarusians in 2020 unexpectedly reminded her of the story of her own great-grandfather.

She carried this family principle through school. An excellent student who could have been a gold medalist, she once openly accused the principal of misusing money earned by schoolchildren on a collective farm. She did not receive a medal after that.

— Well, so what. At least I acted honestly. For me, people have always been more important than any system. Probably, that's also from my grandmother.

"My Belarus is twelve acres of land"

Towards the end of the conversation, Natallia Kaliehava suddenly recalls something very personal – twelve acres of land near Zaslaul. This is her family estate, which is currently under arrest.

— I never wanted to sell it. There are cedars my father planted. There are walnuts. This is not just land. You know, everyone has their own Belarus. For some, it's a whole country. But for me, Belarus is those twelve acres. My whole life is there. My memory.

I ask if she believes she will return there. She doesn't even hesitate:

— Of course.

Then she smiles.

— I've already arranged with Liavon Volski, Dzianis Dudzinski, Katsia Vadanosava. When Belarus becomes free, we will hold a big concert there. On the shortest night of the year. I even know what it will all look like. I just don't know one thing — in what year it will happen.

For now, such a concert in Belarus remains more of a dream destined to happen one day. Currently, the "Dapamoga" team is preparing to celebrate the organization's birthday, which will take place on September 5th at the Castle, and has opened a symbolic fundraiser for those who want to support the organization's activities.

Павялічыць

We leave the Castle already in the evening. Before saying goodbye, Kaliehava repeats once more a thought that seems to best explain everything that has been happening in this house for the sixth year:

— If a person comes to you in trouble, you can no longer pretend you don't see them.

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