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Unlike Svyatlana Tsichanouskaja, the supposed winner of the presidential elections on August 9, Maria Kalesnikava has chosen to stay in her home country even since the Minsk regime began to repress the main representatives of the opposition.
Who is Maria Kalesnikava? Like several of the leading names in the Belarusian opposition, she is not really a politician, but has been thrown into the uprising more or less by chance.
She is 38 years old Concert and professional conductor who this year got in touch with Viktar Babaryka, a conductor who had entered politics to remove President Lukashenko from power. They both had similar views and she put the flute on the shelf and joined her staff.
When Babaryka was arrested by the police in June this year, Kalesnikava, who was her campaign manager at the time, assumed the role of leader of the opposition. She allied herself with Svyatlana Tsichanouskaja and gave her her support before the elections.
Now the regime is producing it as if Kalesnikava secretly tried to cross the border, but failed and could be arrested by the border police.
President Alexander Lukashenko himself said in an interview with Russian state media on Tuesday that Kalesnikava “wanted to flee with her sister in Ukraine.”
So this is the version that the regime wants to bring out. But it does not seem to correspond to reality.
Instead, most indications are that Lukashenko’s security service had been ordered to expel Kalesnikava from the country, but that the operation had failed.
The information is still there scarce. But this is what has happened, according to reliable sources in Belarus.
Shortly after 10 a.m. on Monday, Maria Kalesnikava was outside the National Museum of Art in central Minsk.
The witness Anastasija tells the Tut.by site how she was taken away in a dark minibus.
– I oppose her and suddenly I hear a kind of commotion and I see how some men in civilian clothes with masks drag María into the minibus. Her phone falls to the ground, one of the men grabs it and gets on the bus. Then they leave.
The site immediately contacts Kalesnikava’s press secretary Anton Radniankou, who promises to find out what happened. Half an hour later, he too is unreachable.
Early Tuesday morning another car arrives at Aleksandrovka, a customs station on the border with Ukraine. In the car are Kalesnikava, Radniankou and Ivan Kratsou, another key figure in the Belarusian opposition.
Soon after, Anton Bychkouski, one of the main commanders of the Belarusian border police, explains that the three left the country early in the morning. Later, the Ukrainian side confirmed that both Radniankou and Kratsou are in Ukraine.
But Kalesnikava remains.
How is that? According to a version circulating in the media loyal to the regime, it is said that his colleagues kicked him out of the car and then continued to cross the border. You have been misled by your friends in other words.
More credible is the data in independent media saying that Maria Kalesnikava was taken to the border by her kidnappers from Lukashenko’s security service. But on the way, she tore up her passport so they wouldn’t let her enter Ukraine.
In other words, he deceived his guards and stopped the plan to leave her across the border.
Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Anton Herashchenko confirms this in a post on Facebook:
“They did not deport Maria Kalesnikava because this brave woman acted to stop the border crossing.”
Kalesnikava has now been imprisoned, which is confirmed by Anton Bychkouski, the same border police chief who originally said he had left the country. His whereabouts are unknown.
There is no indication that he had any plans to flee. On the contrary. His father Aljaksandr Kalesnikau tells this to Tut. By:
– Maria always said: “Dad, whatever happens, I’ll stay in Belarus.” That was a beginning for her.
Read more:
Anna-Lena Laurén: Everything looks like a classic disinformation campaign
