We had a computer at home very early. No mansion, no golden toilet: in the nineties my family spent its money on gadgets. I spent hours taking electronics apart and building things out of a huge Lego set that I called buildings.
That, apparently, is how architects are made.
I was born on 10 June 1989 in Minsk, into a family where money and art always sat at the same table. My grandmother wrote textbooks on banking. My father ran a bank and produced Lyapis Trubetskoy. My mother sang. They are in "Before me". This page is about what came of it.
The main thing my father taught me fits into three words: nothing is forever. Not a job, not a position, not anything that looks solid. So you keep raising the bar and you demand things from yourself first. In August 2002, when I was 13, my father was arrested on the train we were taking to Moscow to buy me a school suit. I next saw him six months later.
I have known what the KGB is since I was 13. So in 2020 I had no illusions. What I did have was a habit of change.
For more than ten years I worked in architecture and construction. I founded Bureau 35, was its art director and taught at the Belarusian National Technical University. The bureau designed housing, such as the Olympic Park residential complex in Minsk.
Then I was invited to the Luch watch factory as strategy director. The task sounded modest: make people want to wear Soviet-era watches, not just receive them as anniversary gifts. We changed the logo and released a watch with the letter Ў. That letter exists only in the Belarusian alphabet. Now it was on a dial too.
The factory's new building was designed by Bureau 35. Client and architect reached agreement quickly. Largely because both of them were me.
In May 2020 I joined Viktar Babaryka's campaign to run PR. By then my CV looked eclectic: buildings, watches and a working knowledge of the KGB. All of it, it turned out, came in handy. After the election the Coordination Council was formed, and I became its executive secretary.
In September, Maria Kalesnikava, Anton Rodnenkov and I were put in a car and driven to the Ukrainian border to be expelled. Maria tore up her passport and stayed. Anton and I ended up in Ukraine. That is how I emigrated, without really having time to think about it.
I served as the Council's secretary for almost six years, until August 2026. Today I am one of its delegates. Back home, meanwhile, I was sentenced in absentia to 11 years and added to the lists of extremists and terrorists. Quite a career for a man who used to make watches with the letter Ў.
To understand what had actually happened to us, I went to Exeter to study political thought. My dissertation is about how the Belarusian opposition in exile argues over its own legitimacy. It is in "Articles". Later, as a Just Society Trust fellow, I wrote a book about 2020.
In politics I stand for de-escalation and talking. I compare sanctions to chemotherapy: sometimes you cannot do without it, but you cannot live on it. That is why I support the American negotiation track with Minsk and think the democratic forces need to reinvent themselves. Not everyone agrees. That is fine.
In 2026 I opened a CleanWhale franchise in Singapore, an apartment cleaning service. After architecture, watches and politics it looks unexpected. But cleaning has one undeniable advantage over politics: you see the result the same evening.
Nothing is forever. At thirteen it sounded like a threat. Now I hear good news in it.