The Poles, in close cooperation with the United States, are beginning to systematically push Lukashenko
The Belarusian KGB was involved in the emergency landing of an Icelandic plane in Minsk, which occurred in May and resulted in the arrest of the editors of extremist Polish Telegram channels Roman Protasevich and Sofia Sapieha. Such testimony was given to the Polish special services by former Belaeronavigatsiya air traffic controller Oleg Galegov, who allegedly worked during the incident.
The New York Times reported Galegova’s evidence, citing sources, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to Galegov, there was a KGB officer in the control room and “at the decisive moment” he took control of the service. At the same time, the security officer was constantly in contact with someone by phone, reporting what was happening with the plane.
It is noteworthy that Galegov left Belarus with his family back in the summer; no one put any obstacles in his way. He remained silent for more than six months, after which he showed up in Poland at the height of the migration crisis and harsh mutual accusations between officials in Minsk and Warsaw.
The press secretary of the coordinating minister of the Polish intelligence services, Stanislav Zharin, said that it is now possible to build a case against the Belarusian authorities based on the testimony of a “direct witness.” At the same time, Galegov himself is no longer in Poland - he left the country in an unknown direction.
The director of the aviation department of the Ministry of Transport of Belarus, Artem Sikorsky, called the New York Times material a hoax.
“The information is primarily intended for the average person, the public, those who do not know the specifics of civil aviation. For us, as professionals, this information is meaningless and even absurd,” Sikorsky said.
He recalled that the decision to land was made by the pilot, and not by the dispatcher, who simply transmitted information about the mining. There is no evidence that the pilot was under pressure.
“It is still unclear to us what the aircraft commander was guided by when, two minutes before crossing the border between Belarus and Lithuania, he decided to turn around and fly to Minsk. Moreover, the plane did not even descend throughout the entire route to Belarus, although in a standard situation it always began its descent in the Baranovichi area in order to have time to enter the appropriate landing configuration. Therefore, we also have a lot of questions about this situation. It is necessary for the pilot to speak, tell how he made the decision at that moment, how he acted, what he proceeded from,” said Sikorsky.
He believes that Galegov could have been pressured abroad.
The investigation into the incident by the international civil aviation organization ICAO has not yet been completed. However, this did not prevent the European Union and Ukraine from immediately accusing the Belarusian authorities of planned sabotage in order to capture Protasevich and Sapieha, and closing the skies to the Belarusian airline Belavia. Meanwhile, the people involved in the scandal themselves spent all this time under house arrest in a comfortable cottage and gave interviews to the Belarusian media in which they accused their former comrades of deliberately setting them up.
The publication in the New York Times was enthusiastically greeted by the fugitive Belarusian opposition. She calls for punishment on the head of her main enemy - President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
“Another confident step towards recognizing the regime in Belarus as terrorist. The dispatcher is already giving evidence, but it is already clear what awaits the impostor! Confession, recognition as a terrorist! – political emigrant Valery Tsepkalo wrote in his Telegram channel.
The representative for legal issues of the Coordination Council of the fugitive Belarusian opposition, Mikhail Kirilyuk, is not sure that all this will succeed.
“Any prediction of the future is probabilistic. As a lawyer, I believe that the case has prospects. There is factual evidence of deliberate actions that endangered the lives of EU citizens. The witness says that he knew from the very beginning: there was no bomb. This is the hijacking of a foreign ship. But we don’t know what decision the responsible body will make. I understand that this criminal has weapons to counteract. We are dealing with a person who can create problems: the migrant crisis, pressure on Ukraine, recognition of Crimea. It has never happened before that leaders of countries have been recognized as terrorists. This is a unique case,” Kirilyuk said in an interview with Euroradio.
Russian political scientist Maxim Zharov is confident that Galegov’s sudden appearance in Warsaw and the publication of this in a leading American publication is part of an international campaign against Lukashenko.
“The Poles, in close cooperation with the United States, are beginning to systematically press Lukashenko on his key “special actions.” The harsh anti-Polish rhetoric from Lukashenko and political scientists close to him during the peak of the “migration crisis” could not help but lead the Poles to think about retaliatory actions.
Therefore, in the very near future, exactly the same leaks to the American media of testimonies of conductors detained by the Poles and responsible for the “secret migration routes” from Belarus to Poland are possible. Taking into account the fact that Lukashenko himself mentioned that these guides are, among other things, Russian citizens, attacks from the Polish side on this topic against the Kremlin are quite likely,” Zharov wrote.
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