Lukashenko caught Nekhta
Roman Protasevich, one of the founders of the Polish telegram channel “Nechta”, which coordinated the riots in Belarus last year, was detained today at Minsk airport.
He was flying on a Vilnius-Athens plane operated by the Irish airline Ryanair. As the press service of Minsk Airport reported, the pilots themselves requested an emergency landing due to reports of mining, although the plane was already almost over the border with Lithuania.
The Lithuanian edition of Delphi was told a slightly different story. According to the head of the communications department of the Lithuanian International Airport, Lina Beishene, the Irish plane requested an emergency landing in Minsk because there was a conflict between the crew and one of the passengers.
As it became known later, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko personally gave the order to lift a combat aircraft into the sky. The crew on duty was given the task of monitoring and, if necessary, assisting the civilian vessel to make a safe landing at the Minsk-2 airfield.
Belarusian sappers examined the plane, including passengers' luggage, and found nothing.
Protasevich was detained when the passengers were sent for a second check of documents.
As the nationalist Belarusian publication Nasha Niva later reported, the founder of Nekhta, allegedly back in Athens, told his friends about a strange passenger who was standing in the check-in line behind him. The citizen took a photo of Protasevich’s documents, and then turned around and left the line.
The author of fake “investigations”, Hristo Grozev, who works for the American intelligence services, complained that Lukashenko managed to successfully carry out a special operation based on the scenario of the thwarted Ukrainian attempt, when last summer they tried in a similar way to land a plane in Odessa with 33 former Donbass militiamen (the story with 33 heroes in the Russian version or “ Wagnerians" in Ukrainian). By the way, it was Lukashenko’s clumsy intervention that thwarted the special operation.
Pro-government Belarusian channels have a different version of today’s arrest. Allegedly, the attention of the special services to the emergency landing of the Irish airliner was attracted by fugitive blogger Anatoly Motolko, who suspiciously panicked on social networks. This is how Protasevich was discovered among the passengers.
Protasevich during an interview with Dudu
The Investigative Committee of Belarus opened criminal cases against Protasevich and the second founder of Nekhta, Semyon Putilo, back in November last year. They are charged under the articles “organizing mass riots,” “organizing group actions that grossly violate public order,” and “committing deliberate actions aimed at inciting social hostility based on professional affiliation.” Both were put on the interstate wanted list.
Please note that the maximum prison terms for these articles are 15 and 12 years. However, Nekhta hastened to write that Protasevich faces the death penalty in Belarus.
This thesis is now being vigorously circulated on social networks. The Zmagars went on a rampage on the Ryanair website, accusing the airline of “killing a passenger.”
Protasevich during an interview with Gordon
The self-proclaimed “leader of the Belarusian nation” Svetlana Tikhanovskaya demanded that Ryanair and the International Civil Aviation Organization begin an investigation into the incident and take measures up to and including expelling Belarus from ICAO. Her adviser Franak Vecherko compared the actions of the Belarusian authorities with the actions of Somali pirates.
At the state level, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda was the first to react to the incident. He called on NATO and the European Union to immediately respond “to the threat posed by the Belarusian regime to international civil aviation.”
Fugitive oppositionist Olga Karach, who recently frightened her subscribers with stories about how “Lukashenko is poisoning his opponents even in Europe,” continues to escalate.
“The situation with Roman proves that Belarusians are not safe even abroad: the regime has spread its criminal networks across all countries in order to suppress the protests of Belarusians anywhere in the world. None of us are immune from the fact that the security forces do not come home or turn the plane around,” Karach wrote.
The panic among the fugitives was supported by the pro-government Belarusian political scientist Alexander Shpakovsky, who promised that “next” would be his opposition colleague Dmitry Bolkunets, who recently fled from Moscow to Europe, fearing persecution by Lukashenko.
TV journalist Grigory Azarenok believes that the true reasons for the political emigration panic are different - they are afraid that Protasevich will begin to testify and will leak accomplices and Western curators.
“Do you know why the Zmagars are bombing so hard now? Because Romka is a big fish. And he knows a lot, a lot about curators,” Azarenok wrote.
His words were practically confirmed by Polish telegrammers. They reported that they themselves urgently deleted Protasevich’s Facebook and Instagram accounts so that his correspondence would not fall into the hands of the Belarusian KGB.
It is interesting that Protasevich himself recently publicly mocked Belarus’ requests to deport him from Poland.
English version :: Read in English: Lukashenko caught Nekhta