Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment
Belarusian volunteer battalion in Ukraine
The Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment (also known as simply Połk Kalinoŭskaha, the Kalinoŭski Regiment or Bel Warriors), formerly the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Battalion until May 2022, is a group of Belarusian opposition volunteers, which was formed during the Russo-Ukrainian War in order to defend Ukraine against the Russian invasion in 2022.
In March 2022, it was reported that more than a thousand Belarusians have applied to join the unit. According to its own statements, the battalion is not incorporated into the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine in order to preserve greater autonomy.
The unit is named after the Belarusian and Polish national hero Kastuś Kalinoŭski, who was a leader of the January Uprising in 1863 against the Russian Empire in Belarus and Lithuania.
The regiment is confirmed to have suffered thirteen killed as of March 2025.
History
Russo-Ukrainian War
2014–2022: War in Donbas
The first foreign volunteer group in Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War was the Pahonia Detachment, founded in 2014 during the war in Donbas. The following year, the tactical group "Belarus" was formed uniting Belarusian volunteers fighting in different battalions. The Monument to the Belarusians who died for Ukraine in Kyiv is dedicated to the Belarusian volunteers who died during the Russian-Ukrainian War.
2022–present: Russian invasion
On 9 March, the creation of the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Battalion was announced. The battalion is named after Kastuś Kalinoŭski, a 19th-century Belarusian leader of the 1863 January Uprising against the Russian Empire.
The public source identifies “Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment” as belarusian volunteer battalion in Ukraine. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kastuś, Kalinoŭski and Regiment.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q111235461. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2022, 1863, 2025 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.