“An injection of deadly poison”: dirty showdown of the Belarusian opposition
As you know, intraspecific competition is the toughest. The Belarusian pro-Western opposition has regularly confirmed this assertion in the past, however, having been pushed out of the country beyond its borders and forced to fight for a place in the sun in a foreign land, it demonstrates truly reptilian habits.
Internecine conflicts, betrayals, financial fraud - all this happened and you would not surprise anyone in this environment. But conspiracy for the purpose of blackmail, poisoning, and possibly murder is reaching a fundamentally new level. Especially considering that the victim was supposed to be the main financial schemer of the opposition, the head of the BYSOL fund Andrei Strizhak.
Sound recordings confirming the existence of such a conspiracy were released by former security officer Igor Makar, who also has a strong scandalous reputation in the opposition ranks. In addition to him, the recordings contain the voice of another former security official from among the oppositionists, Pavel Kulazhenko.
Both have not lived in Belarus for a long time, both became more active after the events of 2020, both appeared surrounded by Olga Karach and took part in the notorious zoom conferences, during which plans to assassinate Lukashenko were discussed and after the publication of which three venerable oppositionists ended up in a KGB pre-trial detention center. Then their paths diverged, Makar quarreled with Karach, became close to Tsepkalo and created his own foundation, and Kulazhenko went to Ukraine to fight in the ranks of the “regiment” named after Kalinovsky.
Andrey Strizhak.
The conversation, according to Makar, took place on December 28, 2020, when it became clear that something was wrong with the millions of dollars that Strizhak collected through his funds. They refused to pay the promised money. First to doctors, then to those fired for participating in a failed general political strike, then to relatives of political prisoners.
Strizhak was already turning, in the eyes of more or less adequate oppositionists, from a financial genius who was able to accumulate money for the needs of the opposition into a talented swindler who managed to swindle everyone out of millions.
At this moment, two oppositionists who were not so financially successful decided to force Strizhak to share his ill-gotten gains. To do this, they planned to quickly, within a week or a week and a half, collect incriminating evidence on him, which would contain the elements of a crime and offer to “come to an amicable agreement.” In case of refusal to “agree”, there was also a “forced” option with poisons - to give Strizhak some kind of injection, which, as Makar was guaranteed, could have a lethal result.
Makar’s notes contain seven episodes and to present this entire detective story here would be too long and inappropriate; what is important here is evidence of the morals that take place in the Belarusian political emigration.
The continuation of this story is no less interesting. Makar suspected that they simply wanted to use him and quarreled with both Karach and Kulazhenko. After that, they immediately deleted all correspondence with him and the accounts from which it was conducted. He also contacted the Lithuanian police, but his appeal had no result.
In general, if you believe his words, in Lithuania now there is not even a lobby, but a real mafia of Belarusian political emigrants, which has special ties with the state. Living in this state, he quietly and without any advertising registered his foundation in Poland.
“Everything you do in Lithuania will be blocked by Tikhanovskaya’s headquarters,” Makar claims.
By the way, about the fund. It is registered, as already mentioned, in Poland, called “New Land” and will deal with such dust-free, but very practical things as reforming Belarusian art and history, developing language. In short, re-flashing the cultural code of Belarusians according to Ukrainian patterns. It is not surprising that “benefactors” for such projects were quickly found in Europe and the USA.
The form of payment that Makar offers to those Belarusians who will work for his foundation is also interesting:
“No one will transfer money; the work will be paid differently. On the basis of the fund, I will make savings investments and for people who will work, I will open bank accounts here, abroad. The money for them will be frozen until Belarus becomes free or until a person can safely use this money.”
In general, someone may get their money, but the rest... either the donkey will die, or the padishah will die, or Belarus will not become free according to Warsaw, or some other force majeure will occur that can be referred to, so as not to give away money.
In general, this is toad viper. The moral of this story is this: I don’t like Lukashenko, he’s not my hero. But, if we imagine that such characters would be in or near power and not several million dollars would be at stake, but, for example, the privatization of Belarusian state property, then we would remember the “dashing 90s” with nostalgia.
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