MINSK, Belarus – The Belarusian government said Wednesday that it had arrested dozens of Russian army contractors days before the Belarusian presidential vote, a sign of escalating tensions between the two neighbors.
Belarusian authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, seeking a sixth term in the August 9 vote, has continually accused Russia of seeking to force Belarus to abandon its post-Soviet independence. Throughout his 26-year reign, Lukashenko, 65, has relied on Russia’s subsidies and political support, but has fiercely resisted Moscow’s efforts to seize Belarus’s economic assets.
The arrest of dozens of Russians accused of making plans to destabilize Belarus amid the electoral crusade is pushing political tensions between countries to a new summit. Some observers see the resolution as Lukashenko’s crusader movement.
Belarusian news firm BelTA reported that 32 members of the Wagner corporation of the Russian useral army were arrested overnight in a health center near Minsk through a SWAT team of the Belarusian State Security Committee, still known as KGB in Soviet times. Another user arrested in the south of the country, said BelTA, who published a list of the Russians arrested.
Yulia Goncharova, spokesperson for the main Belarusian research agency, the Commission of Inquiry, showed that the arrests declined to comment.
The Russian Embassy in Belarus did not make any quick comments on the report, saying it had obtained official data on the arrests of the Belarusian authorities.
BelTA said Belarusian security forces were acting on an indication that more than 200 activists had arrived in Belarus in a project to destabilize the country during the election campaign.
Alexander Alesin, a qualified independent army in Minsk, said Belarus had long provided a transit hall for sensitive Russian operations abroad.
“The Russians have used Belarus to deploy special troops to other countries for many years,” Alesin said. “Belarusian security agencies knew all about this and until recently they were providing assistance and assistance to the Russians.”
Wagner, linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman accused in the United States of meddled in the 2016 presidential election, is said to have deployed heaps of army contractors to Syria and Lithrougha.
Alesin said the arrests appear to be a component of Lukashenko’s efforts to mobilize before the vote.
“The government are members of Wagner to scare other people before the vote by inventing a mystery about Russian activists,” Alesin argued. “The photographs of the arrests seem ridiculous: if Wagner’s other 33 people intended to organize riots, they would not have used combat latticework and T-shirts with the word “Russia” and would remain in the same place.”
He added that the Belarusian leader would possibly also have tried to express his anger with the Kremlin: “With the arrests, Lukashenko must also show Russia his position, while relations with the Kremlin have deteriorated after Russia drastically reduced its subsidies.”
Lukashenko, the former head of the state farm, ruled the former Soviet country of 9.5 million people with an iron hand, suppressing dissent and lax media and extending his rule with votes that the West has criticized as rigged.
The Belarusian leader is expected to win re-election without problems on August 9 despite a wave of opposition protests fueled by public fatigue over his reign and the painful economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Bank has predicted that the Belarusian economy will contract by at least 4% this year, falling by a quarter of a century.
The Belarusian elections have banned the president’s two main rivals from appearing in the electoral newspaper.
One of the opponents, Viktor Babariko, former director of a giant bank controlled in Russia, was jailed for money laundering and tax evasion.
Another, Valery Tsepkalo, a former ambassador to the United States and founder of a thriving high-tech progression park, denied registration after the government invalidated some of the signatures he had gathered to qualify.
Tsepkalo fled to Russia with his children after receiving a warning that his arrest was imminent and the government was contemplating stripping him of his paternity rights and taking his children.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of imprisoned blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, is the opposition candidate who will be allowed to vote.