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The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Maria Kolesnikova are becoming clearer. The Belarusian opposition was supposed to be driven out of the country and resisted.
According to a witness, the Belarusian authorities tried to forcibly deport the missing opposition politician Maria Kolesnikova to Ukraine. Kolesnikova was “forced to sit in the back seat of a car,” Belarusian activist Anton Rodnenkov, who was present at the incident on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, reported Tuesday in Kiev. Kolesnikova fought and, among other things, broke her passport, in the end she was arrested.
After his disappearance, the well-known opposition politician is said to have been arrested in Belarus, according to border guards. The opposition believed that they should be removed from the country against their will. However, according to the authorities, he allegedly wanted to travel to Ukraine. His whereabouts were initially unclear. The opposition demanded his immediate release. The 38-year-old is one of the main leaders of the protests against the authoritarian head of state Alexander Lukashenko.
Opposition leader disappeared on Monday
Kolesnikova disappeared without a trace on Monday. According to the border guard on Tuesday, she is said to have driven to the checkpoint in the south of the country with her employee Ivan Kravzov and her spokesman Anton Rodnenkow. The two men are gone. Ukraine also confirmed it. According to the opposition, they are in Kiev. Are you sure. In the morning there were conflicting reports that the three had left for Ukraine.
Lukashenko said in an interview with journalists from Russian state media that Kolesnikova allegedly wanted to flee to Ukraine with her sister. Border officials prevented them from doing so.
Kolesnikowa, 38, who lived in Stuttgart for many years and managed cultural projects there, is one of the most important members of the opposition. Some of the members of the Coordination Council had been previously arrested or left the country. Kolesnikova works for former bank director Viktor Babariko, who wanted to run for president.
The arrest must “clarify the circumstances”
The arrest was made “to clarify the circumstances,” according to authorities. No details were given. The opposition also confirmed the arrest, but had no further details. She received information that Kolesnikova was being held in a prison in the south of the country. Initially there was no official confirmation for this.
Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko spoke on Facebook of an attempted deportation. “Maria Kolesnikova could not be deported from Belarus because this brave woman made her deportation across the border impossible for her actions.” Pavel Latuschko, from the Coordination Council of the Movement for Democracy, said that Kolesnikova had broken her passport at the border to avoid a forced departure.
The Coordination Council initially assumed on Monday that Kolesnikova had been abducted by strangers in the center of the capital, Minsk. Observers also doubted the description of border protection and spoke of a selective approach on the part of the authorities. Kolesnikova repeatedly appeared in protests against Lukashenko and was cheered on by protesters. She herself had stressed that she did not want to leave the country. “I will not flee anywhere and I am ready to defend my country to the end.”
“There is no other solution”
The opposition party Svetlana Tichanowskaja demanded the immediate release of her campaign partner. “The task of the coordinating council is to be a platform for negotiations,” said the 37-year-old, who faced the head of state and remains in the EU country Lithuania. “There is no other solution and Lukashenko has to acknowledge this.” He couldn’t just take people hostage. She also spoke Tuesday in a video link in front of a Council of Europe committee and called for tougher sanctions against the government.
The background to the protests is the presidential elections of more than four weeks ago. Lukashenko was then declared the winner with 80.1 percent of the votes. However, the opposition considers Tichanovskaya to be the real winner. The vote is criticized internationally for being grossly falsified.
Lukashenko: Everything the opposition offers “is a disaster for Belarus”
In the interview with Russian state television, the president refused to hold talks with members of the opposition. “This is not an opposition. Everything it offers is a disaster for Belarus,” he said. The 66-year-old claimed that his opponents wanted to break “ties with brotherly Russia.” Minsk, on the other hand, wants further integration with Moscow. The two countries agreed to closer cooperation 20 years ago on a state of the Union treaty.
The opposition wants to achieve a peaceful change of power through dialogue through a coordinating council. Their representatives had given the authoritarian leadership several talks. In addition, the agency wants to continue working with Russia.
Lukashenko has been in power for 26 years. He said, “Yeah, maybe I’ll be in the post too long. Maybe they won’t just show me on TV, but also on every corner.”
