Belarus is making the rest of Europe nervous

KRYSTINA TIMANOVSKAYA is not your standard dissident. An Olympic sprinter representing Belarus in Tokyo, she had never publicly criticised the government nor its despotic president, Alexander Lukashenko. Her crime was to complain on social media that her coaches had registered her for the 4x400-metre relay without telling her. So they took her to Tokyo airport against her will, to fly her home. There she sought protection from Japan’s police. The next day, Poland granted her and her family asylum. She claims that the call to send her back came not from the sports ministry but from “a higher level”.

Ms Timanovskaya joins an expanding collection of Belarusians in Europe living beyond the bailiwick of a regime whose old sobriquet of “Europe’s last dictatorship” does not fully convey its slide towards full-blown gangsterism. On the very day Ms Timanovskaya received her Polish visa, an event in Ukraine showed why being granted asylum is not a guarantee of protection.