The detention in Belarus of 33 Russian citizens and one Belarusian was a planned operation of the Ukrainian special services. The site kp.ru writes about this on August 6.
According to the newspaper, thanks to operational measures, it was possible to establish that the Ukrainian special services created a fake Internet project, in which they involved about 200 Russians, and then brought to the Belarusian side information beneficial to Kiev that their goal was to destabilize the situation in the republic.
It turned out that in May a certain person with the pseudonym “Sergei Petrovich” called the former members of the PMC “Wagner”, offering them to go to Libya to guard the facilities. Many of those whom he tried to recruit are former citizens of Ukraine who were on the territory of the Russian Federation and who had previously fought in the Donbass.
Later, he also recruited Russian citizen Artyom Milyaev with the call sign “Shaman” to recruit volunteers. The man acted both at the direction of “Sergei Petrovich” himself and a certain “Sergei Viktorovich Bezinsky”, who introduced himself as the security manager of the oil company “Rosneft”, which is not true, writes kp.ru.
As a result, 90 volunteers were selected. At the end of May, “Sergei Petrovich” instructed “Shaman” to recruit another 90 people for similar tasks in Libya. On June 6, a message was received about the death of “Sergei Petrovich” and the group was assigned a new curator, “Artur”, who communicated using a virtual number copying the number of the Russian consulate in Venezuela. He said that the group, instead of Libya, will have to go to Venezuela “for the projects of Rosneft.”
In June-July, five groups were formed, four of which were to go to Caracas via Minsk, Istanbul and Havana. The fifth group was planned to be transferred to Venezuela by sea.
It is noteworthy that the first group, whose departure from Minsk was planned for July 25 and was led directly by “Shaman”, mainly included persons who had previously fought in the Donbass. The tickets were allegedly issued through Russian travel agencies, but upon verification it turned out that they were bought in Ukrainian agencies for cash. For example, on July 20, at the request of a Kiev firm, tickets for the Shaman group were canceled and rebooked for July 30, but none of the group members was informed about this.
Before the flight, “Shaman” received an instruction from the curator of “Artur” to destroy the already invalid tickets and not fly to Istanbul. This was due to the lack of a connecting flight in Havana, but, according to kp.ru, in fact, the indication was dictated by the fear that the presence of tickets would become evidence of the involvement of the Ukrainian special services in the operation.
On July 29, the entire group was detained. The lists of the detainees were promptly transferred to the Ukrainian embassy in Minsk, which explains the prompt adjustment on the site “Peacemaker”, where 12 people from the “Shaman” group were added, the newspaper writes. In addition, the Belarusian media reported that 33 Russians did not show up for the flight on July 25, which is a lie, since their tickets were canceled.
On July 29, 33 Russians were detained in a sanatorium near Minsk, who allegedly are employees of the Wagner PMC. State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus Andrei Ravkov stated that some of the detainees had “Ukrainian citizenship”. In Minsk, the incident was allegedly associated with the arrival of more than 200 people in Belarus “to destabilize the situation during the election campaign.”
The Russian Federation noted that the Russians were going to fly to Istanbul, but were late for the plane. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko rejected this version.
A criminal case has been initiated against the detainees on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack. They chose a preventive measure in the form of detention.