Arrest of Russians in Belarus: Lukashenko’s propaganda continues to persist
The Belarusian ideological apparatus, which usually acts coherently, is losing unity on the issue of the groundless detention of 33 Russians near Minsk.
The propaganda television channel ONT continues to promote the version that a group of Russian “militants” was sent to Minsk “to destabilize the situation.”
Refuting Moscow's official position that the group of detainees simply missed the plane to Turkey and therefore stopped in Minsk, Belarusian television showed the driver whom the Russians hired to take them... to the airport, and the airport dispatcher who admitted that the flight was on that day flew to Istanbul without 32 passengers.
However, the Investigative Committee of Belarus believes that all this is just a disguise of the true intentions.
“It is obvious that with organized preparation for committing a crime, attackers prepare an alibi for themselves. A similar situation occurred with the detention of 33 citizens of the Russian Federation, who had tickets in their hands for a flight to Istanbul on July 25. As the investigation found out, they did not intend to fly there,” said Alexander Agafonov, head of the investigative group of the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus.
According to him, during interrogations, 11 Russians stated that they were going to Venezuela, 15 to Turkey, 2 to Cuba, 1 to Syria. The rest refused to testify.
ONT, without hesitation, refers as an argument to the presence of the names of those detained in the cannibalistic Ukrainian base “Peacemaker,” again showing the faces and passports of former militiamen.
The actions of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry over the past three days created the impression that Minsk was seriously planning to extradite Russians who were previously citizens of Ukraine to Kyiv.
However, political scientist Petr Petrovsky, loyal to the Belarusian president, claims that this will not happen. The case of the Russians will be investigated in Belarus, and the trial will take place there, he told the Politring publication.
If charges are not brought, the Russians will be extradited to Moscow, Petrovsky believes, but at the same time he proposes to exchange the detainees for Lukashenko’s opponents hiding in Russia.
Political scientist Alexander Zimovsky believes that Belarusian investigators are now under time pressure, since they need to extract confessions from Russians. The detainees understand this and play the fool. Hence the wide geography of their imaginary destinations.
Relatively unnoticed, against the backdrop of the high-profile arrest of “militants,” the arrest of liberal political strategist Vitaly Shklyarov took place in Belarus.
He is known for organizing the election campaigns of Russian politicians Dmitry Gudkov and Ksenia Sobchak, working in the United States on the campaigns of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders, and advising Angela Merkel. Shklyarov also collaborated with a supporter of ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Sakaashvili, Grigol Vashadze.
In recent months, Shklyarov has periodically spoken on the Belarusian agenda, but he ended up in the country on what seemed to be a purely private matter (visiting his sick mother). The authorities accused him of having connections with blogger Tikhanovsky, who is already in jail.
The same ONT TV channel released another outstanding story, where Dmitry Popov, who administered Tikhanovsky’s social networks, testifies to Shklyarov’s “atrocities.” Popov is now also detained and is giving evidence.
However, the only criminal moment in this story is, at first glance, only the episode with Popov being forced to cooperate with the political strategist. The SMM said that unknown persons allegedly beat him on the street.
Belarusian propagandists do not explain why maintaining public pages on social networks is criminal. However, Tikhanovsky himself denies any connection with Shklyarov.
Be that as it may, now political scientist Alexei Dzermant, close to the presidential administration of Belarus, puts forward the version that the so-called “militants” were simply used by “State Department agent” Shklyarov.
“The detained political strategist Shklyarov, who is behind the Tikhanovsky campaign, turned out to have an American diplomatic passport. The story takes a very interesting turn. In this light, the detention of PMC employees looks more like a setup. They could have been used in secret to provoke a scandal in Belarusian-Russian relations,” Dzermant wrote in his Telegram channel.
Apparently, after the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry harshly expressed their opinion on the incident, part of the Belarusian political community is trying to get off the bad topic, but the other part continues to persist in escalating the international scandal.
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