MINSK, 19 April (BelTA) – On 17 April the ONT TV channel ran a special report revealing the details of preparations to assassinate Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko and to arrange a mutiny in the country, BelTA informs.
KGB Chairman Ivan Tertel told the ONT TV channel that the KGB had recently completed a special multi-stage operation to thwart attempts to stage an armed rebellion in Belarus and to eliminate government officials, including the head of state. These events were to take place in June-July 2021.
“Members of this group had thoroughly planned and started implementing their plot to assassinate the Belarusian president, his family members, and to arrange a mutiny in order to seize power by force,” Ivan Tertel said.
The group included Belarusian and foreign citizens. According to the report, the codename for the mutiny was ‘Silence'. The special report showed footage of meetings of the plotters who discussed the details of the conspiracy. They compared their plot to the assassination of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat by terrorists.
Aleksandr Feduta was one of the participants in the meetings. “Some people know him as a literary scholar, political scientist, and doctor of humanities. He was the one who masterminded the plot,” the TV channel said.
Yuri Zenkovich was named “the main organizer of the coup”. According to the TV channel, he had long lived in the United States. He claimed that the U.S. Department of State would stand up for him if he failed.
Among the participants of the meeting were leader of the BPF opposition party Grigory Kostusev, emigre opposition activist Igor Makar and others.
The plot was financed from abroad. Money was used to bribe people. Lockers at a train station and even a cemetery were used as hiding places, and foreign currency cash was also passed from hand to hand.
"Our main task is to eliminate the country's leader. The number two task is to close in on the internal troops, to block the riot police. The number three task is to seize several symbolic facilities in the city center, including a radio station and television and communicate our address. It would be good if we shut down Minsk to make sure the external troops could not help," Yuri Zenkovich said at a personal meeting with other suspects. The recording was shown in the special report.
The final stage of the special operation took place in Russia after the KGB received the information that Yuri Zenkovich intended to fly from the United States to Moscow via Poland to meet with his accomplices. The detention took place with the assistance of the FSB.
"The KGP opened criminal cases against those detained on the appropriate charges," the KGB chairman said.
The ONT TV channel added that the group maintained close ties with terrorist groups, prepared at least three scenarios of seizing power by force.
As BelTA has reported, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko unveiled the details of preparations to murder him and his sons, which involved foreign special services, as he talked to the media on the subbotnik [voluntary labor] day on 17 April.
Aleksandr Lukashenko noted that the attempts to organize a mutiny first and then a "creeping coup" failed. "What else can they do now? They repeatedly said that everything in Belarus hinges on Lukashenko, and that he needs to be removed. My task is to make sure they will still fail even if they manage to remove me from the post. That's my main task. I have made a decision; we are formalizing it now and will announce it soon. This will be one of the most important decisions of my presidency. It's going to be very serious. So even if I'm not president, I need to make sure they will still fail. I have made a decision. Now I need to formalize it. Most likely it will be the president's decree," the Belarusian leader said.
"The second thing is unacceptable at all. I was silent because it was about me, my family, my children. I did not want to talk about it. But they decided to take on the children. The plan was to capture one son, then another, as luck would have it, and hold them in the cellar. By the way, they prepared the cellar in Gomel Oblast. We already detained a group, they showed what and how they were planning,” the head of state said. “Then we discovered the involvement of the apparently foreign intelligence services, most likely, the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI. I do not know which of the American services worked here ... We learned about their plans to come to Minsk and to organize an assassination against the president and his children."
