Tag Archives: Minsk

Russian Spy plane destroyed by Drone attack

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Russia’s £274m spy plane ‘destroyed by drone attack near Minsk’ in disaster for Putin
  • Russia’s A-50 aircraft is a surveillance and command-and-control aircraft that is designed to monitor enemy airspace and detect incoming aircraft, as well as coordinate and direct combat operations.
  • The Belarusian anti-government organization, BYPOL, has claimed that two explosions have damaged the front and central parts of the AWACS Beriev A-50U aircraft, as well as the radar antenna at the Machulishchy air base near Minsk
  • BYPOL has accused the Belarusian government of attempting to cover up the incident and has called for an international investigation.
  • Franak Viacorka, a close adviser of Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya tweeted: “Partisans… confirmed a successful special operation to blow up a rare Russian plane at the airfield in Machulishchy near Minsk,’
  • “This is the most successful diversion since the beginning of 2022.”

Read the original article by clicking here.

Poland says Belarus ferries migrants back to border after clearing camps

By Yara Abi Nader and Kacper Pempel

BIELSK PODLASKI, Poland/BRUZGI, Belarus (Reuters) -Poland accused Belarus on Friday of trucking hundreds of migrants back to the border and pushing them to attempt to cross illegally, only hours after clearing camps at a frontier that has become the focus of an escalating East-West crisis.

The accusation by Poland suggests the crisis has not been resolved by an apparent change of tack by Minsk, which on Thursday had cleared the main camps by the border and allowed the first repatriation flight to Iraq in months.

European governments accuse Belarus of flying in thousands of people from the Middle East and pushing them to attempt to illegally cross the EU border, where several people have died in the freezing woods. Belarus denies fomenting the crisis.

Polish Border Guard spokesperson Anna Michalska said that by Thursday evening, just hours after clearing the camps, Belarus authorities were already trucking hundreds back and forcing them to try to cross in darkness.

“(The Belarusians) were bringing more migrants to the place where there was a forced attempt to cross,” Michalska said. “At the beginning there were 100 people, but then the Belarusian side brought more people in trucks. Then there were 500 people.”

When the migrants tried to cross the border, Belarusian troops blinded Polish guards with lasers, she told a news conference. Some migrants had thrown logs and four guards sustained minor injuries.

Access to the border on the Polish side is restricted by a state of emergency, making it difficult to verify her account.

‘NIGHTMARE’

In an interview with the BBC, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko repeated denials that he had orchestrated the crisis but, asked if Belarus was helping migrants try and cross into Poland, he said: “I think that’s absolutely possible. We’re Slavs. We have hearts. Our troops know the migrants are going to Germany. Maybe someone helped them. I won’t even look into this.”

The migrants from the camp on the Belarus side were taken on Thursday to a huge, crowded warehouse and journalists were permitted to film them. Children ran about on Friday morning, and men played cards while one dangled a toddler on his lap.

“This is not a life but this is not permanent, this should be just temporary until they decide our destiny: to take us to Europe or bring us back to our countries,” said 23-year-old electrician Mohammed Noor.

“What I wish for myself, I wish it for others too – to go to Europe and live a stable life.”

Meanwhile in a hospital in Bielsk Podlaski, on the Polish side, two migrants who had been caught after crossing were given treatment before being taken away by Polish border guards.

Before he was taken away, Mansour Nassar, 42, a father-of-six from Aleppo, in Syria, who had travelled to Belarus from Lebanon, described his ordeal during five days in the forest.

“The Belarusian army told us: ‘If you come back, we will kill you’,” he said, in tears in his hospital bed. “We drank from ponds… Our people are always oppressed.”

Kassam Shahadah, a Syrian refugee doctor living in Poland who helps out in another hospital, said patients were terrified of being forcibly returned to Belarus.

“What they have seen, what they have lived through on that side is a nightmare for them,” he said.

EXTREME SUFFERING

Human rights groups say Poland has exacerbated the suffering by sending back those who try to cross. Poland says this is necessary to stop more people from coming.

“I have personally listened to the appalling accounts of extreme suffering from desperate people – among whom many families, children and elderly – who spent weeks or even months in squalid and extreme conditions in the cold and wet woods due to these pushbacks,” Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović said after a four-day mission to Poland.

“I have witnessed clear signs of their painful ordeal: wounds, frostbite, exposure to extreme cold, exhaustion and stress,” she said. “I have no doubt that returning any of these people to the border will lead to more extreme human suffering and more deaths.”

The Polish border guards have recorded seven deaths at the border. Rights groups say more than 10 people have died.

‘CYNICAL AND INHUMANE’

Europeans have shunned Lukashenko since a disputed election last year, but reached out cautiously this week, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaking to Lukashenko twice by phone.

However, on Thursday the European Commission and Germany rejected a proposal that Minsk said Lukashenko had made to Merkel, under which EU countries would take in 2,000 migrants, while 5,000 others would be sent back home..

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that the situation on the borders remained deeply concerning.

“Lukashenko’s regime’s use of vulnerable people as a means to put pressure on other countries is cynical and inhumane,” he said. “NATO stands in full solidarity with all affected allies.”

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska, Pawel Florkiewicz, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Leon Malherbe, Yara Abi Nader, Kacper Pempel, Stephan Schepers, Andrius Sytas; Writing by Joanna Plucinska and Ingrid Melander; Editing by Peter Graff and Alex Richardson)

Belarus leader says detained journalist was plotting ‘bloody rebellion’

By Tom Balmforth and Maria Kiselyova

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Wednesday a journalist pulled off a plane that was forced to land in Minsk had been plotting a rebellion, and he accused the West of waging a hybrid war against him.

In his first public remarks since a Belarusian warplane intercepted a Ryanair flight on Sunday between European Union members Greece and Lithuania, he showed no hint of backing down from confrontation with countries that accuse him of air piracy.

“As we predicted, our ill-wishers from outside the country and from inside the country changed their methods of attack on the state,” Lukashenko told parliament.

“They have crossed many red lines and have abandoned common sense and human morals,” he said, referring to a “hybrid war” without giving any details.

Belarus has been subject to EU and U.S. sanctions since Lukashenko cracked down on pro-democracy protests after a disputed election last year. But his decision to intercept an international airliner in Belarusian airspace and arrest a 26-year-old dissident journalist has brought vows of much more serious action.

In his speech to parliament, Lukashenko gave no details of the “bloody rebellion” he accused journalist Roman Protasevich of planning.

Protasevich, whose social media feed from exile had been one of the last remaining independent sources of news about Belarus, was shown on state TV on Monday confessing to organizing demonstrations.

But Belarus opposition figures dismissed the confession, seeing the video as evidence Protasevich had been tortured, an allegation repeated by his mother, Natalia.

“I simply plead with all the international community… please, world, stand up and help, I beg you so much because they will kill him,” she told Polish broadcaster TVN.

Late on Tuesday, state TV broadcast a similar confession video of Sophia Sapega, a 23-year-old student arrested with Protasevich.

Germany led condemnation of Belarus over the videotapes, which Lukashenko’s opponents said were recorded under coercion.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Belarusian rulers’ practice of parading their prisoners in public with so-called ‘confessions,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

Belarus denies it mistreats detainees. Rights groups have documented what they say are hundreds of cases of abuse and forced confessions since last year.

FLIGHTS RE-ROUTED

Europe’s aviation regulator issued a bulletin on Wednesday urging all airlines to avoid Belarus airspace for safety reasons, saying the forced diversion of the Ryanair flight had put in question its ability to provide safe skies.

Western governments have told their airlines to re-route flights to avoid Belarus’s airspace and have announced plans to ban Belarusian planes. The European Union says other unspecified sanctions are also in the works.

Credit rating agency S&P Global signalled it could downgrade Belarus’ credit rating if Western governments impose stronger economic sanctions.

Lukashenko said he would respond harshly to any sanctions. His prime minister said the country could ban some imports and restrict transit in response, without giving details.

Landlocked Belarus is located between its ally Russia and the EU, and some Russian oil and gas flows through it. Last year, it retaliated for sanctions by limiting some oil export traffic through a port in Lithuania.

In his remarks to parliament, Lukashenko, 66, said street protests were no longer possible in Belarus. Most known opposition figures are now in jail or exile.

In power since 1994, Lukashenko faced weeks of mass protests after he was declared the winner of a presidential election that his opponents said was rigged. The protests lost momentum after thousands of arrests in a police crackdown.

Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said the opposition was now preparing a new phase of active protests.

“There’s nothing more to wait for – we have to stop the terror once and for all,” she said.

ATTEMPTS TO ISOLATE BELARUS

Western powers are seeking ways to increase the isolation of Lukashenko, who has previously shrugged off Western sanctions, which mostly consisted of placing officials on black lists. The West is wary of upsetting Moscow, which regards Belarus as a strategically important buffer.

U.S. President Joe Biden will discuss the incident with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit next month but the White House said it does not believe Moscow played any role in the incident.

Belarusian authorities on Tuesday released a transcript of a conversation between the Ryanair plane and an air traffic controller. In it, the controller tells the pilot of a bomb threat and advises him to land in Minsk. The pilot repeatedly questions the source of the information before agreeing to divert the plane.

The transcript, which Reuters could not independently verify, differed from excerpts released by Belarus state TV, which reported that the pilot had asked to land in Minsk, rather than that the controller advised him to do so.

The Ryanair plane remains in the Lithuanian capital’s airport, where it flew after Minsk, while data is collected form it, the Lithuanian prosecutor’s office said.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Peter Graff and Angus MacSwan)

Washington hits Belarus with sanctions as Minsk retaliates against EU measures

(Reuters) – The United States imposed sanctions on eight Belarusian officials on Friday, accusing them of involvement in rigging President Alexander Lukashenko’s re-election victory in August or the violent crackdown on protests that followed.

The move came after the European Union announced sanctions on 40 people, including the interior minister and the head of the election commission, achieving a breakthrough on the issue at summit talks in the early hours of Friday morning.

Lukashenko was spared, in line with the EU’s policy of punishing powerbrokers as a last resort. He denies electoral fraud and says the protests are backed from abroad.

Lukashenko’s government announced retaliatory sanctions against unidentified officials, recalled its ambassadors to Poland and Lithuania for consultations and nudged both countries to reduce the size of their embassy staff in Minsk.

Lukashenko is grappling to contain nearly two months of street protests that pose the biggest challenge to his 26-year rule. More than 13,000 people have been arrested, and major opposition figures jailed or exiled.

“The United States and our international partners stand united in imposing costs on those who have undermined Belarusian democracy for years,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

The U.S. sanctions also targeted Belarusian Interior Minister Yuri Karaev and his deputy. Those under sanctions are subject to asset freezes and a ban against Americans doing business with them.

Washington had originally been expected to impose sanctions in concert with Britain and Canada, which went ahead on Tuesday with travel bans and asset freezes on Lukashenko, his son Viktor and other senior officials.

Washington has had sanctions on Lukashenko since 2006 but the president was spared in the latest round of measures.

LUKASHENKO SPEAKS TO PUTIN

The crisis has pushed Belarus back towards traditional ally Russia, which has propped up Lukashenko’s government with loans and the offer of military support. Moscow sees its ex-Soviet neighbor as a strategic buffer against the EU and NATO.

Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone on Friday, expressing confidence that “the problems that have arisen will soon be resolved”, the Kremlin said.

Lukashenko’s government announced it had drawn up a list of people who were banned from travelling to Belarus in retaliation for the EU sanctions. It did not name the officials or the countries they were from.

“…we are imposing visa sanctions against the most biased representatives of European institutions, including the European Parliament and the states – EU members,” foreign ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz was quoted by the official Belta news agency as saying.

“The list is symmetrical in many ways. We have decided not to make it public for now.”

Russia’s foreign ministry said the Belarusian sanctions would apply in Russia as well.

Lukashenko’s government also asked the Polish and Lithuanian embassies to reduce their staff. Both countries refused.

“We are not going to summon our ambassadors for consultations, and we will definitely not do anything to reduce personnel,” Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Linas Linkevicius told reporters.

“We are not interested in reducing our communications channel,” he said. “If the advice becomes a request, then we will take appropriate measures.”

The Belarusian authorities have detained journalists or stripped them of their accreditation as part of the crackdown on the unrest that followed the Aug. 9 election.

On Friday, the foreign ministry announced it was stripping journalists working for foreign media organizations of their accreditation, and asked them to reapply for their permits.

“I would like to make it clear that it is in no way some attempt to cleanse the news reporting field,” Glaz was quoted by Belta as saying.

The EU sanctions had been held up by Cyprus due to an unrelated dispute with Turkey. The delay dented the credibility of the EU’s foreign policy, diplomats said.

“That we could now agree to those sanctions is an important signal because it strengthens the hand of those who are protesting for freedom of opinion in Belarus,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told journalists.

Merkel will meet on Tuesday with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenko’s main electoral opponent who fled into exile after the vote in the ex-Soviet republic, fearing for her family’s safety.

French President Emmanuel Macron met Tsikhanouskaya on Tuesday, pledging European support for the Belarusian people.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Daphne Psaledakis and Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Vladimir Soldatkin, Alexander Marrow and Polina Ivanova in Moscow, Joanna Plucinska in Warsaw, Thomas Escritt in Berlin; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Mark Potter)

Belarus jails two opposition leaders; teachers head rally of thousands

By Andrei Makhovsky

MINSK (Reuters) – Belarus jailed two opposition leaders for 10 days on Tuesday as the government pursued a crackdown on the few figures still at large, while schoolteachers led a new protest of thousands against President Alexander Lukashenko.

Despite most major opposition figures being in jail or exile, Lukashenko has so far failed to put down protests against his 26-year-old rule, more than two weeks after an election his opponents say was rigged.

Olga Kovalkova and Siarhei Dyleuski were brought to separate courts where they were each jailed for 10 days. Kovalkova is the main representative still in Belarus of opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and Dyleuski has led strikes at Minsk’s flagship tractor factory.

Both are senior figures in an opposition Coordination Council, set up last week with the self-described aim of negotiating with the authorities. They were arrested on Monday.

Lukashenko has accused the new council of attempting to seize power, and prosecutors have launched a criminal case.

In the latest protest, thousands gathered on Tuesday at the ministry of education to demonstrate against a threat by Lukashenko to fire any schoolteachers who do not support his government. Rallies have typically attracted thousands during the week, swelling to tens of thousands on weekends.

“I have come so that teachers are not afraid, so that their voice can be heard, so that they can work even if they have a different view from the authorities,” said a literature teacher who gave her name as Svetlana.

Lukashenko has denied election cheating. He has called the protesters “rats” and says they are funded from abroad.

His posturing has grown steadily more confrontational: in recent days he has been pictured on state television with a Kalashnikov rifle and tactical vest. Yet so far, a long-standing threat of a decisive police operation to clear the streets has yet to materialize.

Another opposition council member, Pavel Latushko, a former culture minister and head of the main state drama theater, was questioned by investigators on Tuesday but not arrested. He emerged saying he would go back to work and the council’s activities were not illegal.

The council includes dozens of figures representing broad swathes of society. Nobel Prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich has been summoned for questioning on Wednesday.

“The intimidation will not work. We will not relent,” candidate Tsikhanouskaya said in a video link with the European Parliament. “We demand all political prisoners freed. We demand to stop the violence and intimidation by the authorities.”

OPPOSITION

Tsikhanouskaya, 37, fled to Lithuania after the election her supporters say she won. A political novice, she emerged as the consensus opposition candidate after better-known figures were barred from standing, including her jailed activist husband.

Belarus is the closest ally to Russia of all former Soviet republics, and Lukashenko’s fate is widely seen as in the hands of the Kremlin, which must decide whether to stick with him as his authority has ebbed.

There are signs Moscow still backs him. Russia has sent journalists to staff Belarus state TV after workers quit in protest against what they described as orders to broadcast propaganda. Nevertheless, Lukashenko is seen in Moscow as a truculent and erratic ally, with a strained personal relationship with President Vladimir Putin.

The West has had to balance its sympathy for a nascent Belarusian pro-democracy movement with its concern that strong support would trigger a Russian-backed crackdown.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun was due in Moscow for talks on Tuesday after meeting Tsikhanouskaya on Monday in Lithuania.

The crisis also threatens to hurt the finances of a country with only limited foreign currency reserves. The Belarus rouble fell to a new low against the euro, and there have been queues at exchange points as Belarusians try to buy hard currency.

(Additional reporting by Robin Emmott in Brussels; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood, Angus MacSwan, William Maclean)