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Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova was arrested on the border with Ukraine when she tried to leave Belarus illegally, the Belta agency, the official body of that former Soviet republic, reported on Tuesday.
“Maria Kolesnikova tried to illegally leave the territory of the Republic of Belarus, but was arrested at the border,” he said.
Opposition comrades reported that Kolsnikova was abducted in central Minsk on Monday by several masked men who loaded her into a van and took her to an unknown destination.
The Belarusian Borders Committee (CFB) reported, in turn, that Kolesnikova, together with two other members of the Coordination Council for the peaceful transfer of power, Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov, passed control of Alexandrovka on the border between Ukraine and Belarus.
“After passing through customs and border control, the car advanced towards Ukraine and, when it ran into a patrol of border guards, it accelerated the march, with danger of life for a military officer of the Belarusian border guard.” CFB spokesman Anton Bychkovski.
“Most likely arresting Kolesnikova is a trap,” a source from the Opposition Coordination Council told Russia’s Interfax agency.
The same source noted that neither Rodnenkov, Kravtsov, nor Kolesnikova plan to leave the country.
Kolesnikova, a member of the Coordination Council for the peaceful transfer of power in Belarus, is one of the main figures of the Belarusian opposition in the country and one of the few who chose not to go into exile abroad.
Maria Kolesnikova, a musician by profession, is the only one of the three women who faced Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in the ongoing presidential campaign in Minsk, as opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Veronika Tsepkalo later went into exile. of the August 9 elections.
Belarus has been the scene of several demonstrations since August 9, when Alexander Lukashenko won a sixth presidential term.
In the first days of the protests, the police detained some 7,000 people and brutally repressed hundreds, prompting international protests and the threat of sanctions.
The United States, the European Union and several neighboring Belarus countries rejected Lukashenko’s recent electoral victory and condemned the police crackdown, urging Minsk to enter into a dialogue with the opposition.
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