-Ukrainian minister described it as an attempt to banish opposition
Foreign Desk Report
KYIV: Prominent opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova was detained by Belarusian authorities, a border official said, after thwarting what a Ukrainian government minister described as an attempt to expel her from Belarus.
The Interfax Ukraine news agency said the activist had deliberately ripped up her passport so that Ukrainian border officials would not be able to let her through. Deputy Ukrainian Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said Kolesnikova, who had been missing for the previous 24 hours, had successfully prevented “a forcible expulsion from her native country”.
Soon after the incident, President Alexander Lukashenko told Russian reporters that he would not rule out holding new elections after four weeks of mass protests, but rejected any talks with opponents who he said were bent on steering the country towards disaster. The fate of Kolesnikova, a key figure during the protests, had been a mystery since supporters said she was snatched in the street by masked men in the capital Minsk on Monday.
“Maria Kolesnikova made a courageous act that did not allow the Belarusian special services to expel her to the territory of Ukraine,” Gerashchenko told Reuters. “All responsibility for her life and health is on Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus.” Kolesnikova’s whereabouts were unclear. Two other opposition figures who had gone missing around the same time as her, Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov, did however enter Ukraine in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Ukrainian border service said.
“Kolesnikova has now been detained, I can’t say concretely where she is, but she has been detained,” Anton Bychkovsky, a representative of the Belarusian border service, told Reuters by phone. “She was detained in connection with the circumstances under which they (the group) left the territory of Belarus,” he said.
Lukashenko, who has crushed dissent in Belarus for the past 26 years, conceded in his interview with Russian journalists that he may have held onto power too long. “Yes, maybe I overstayed a bit,” Russian journalist Roman Babayan cited Lukashenko as saying. But the 66-year-old leader said he was the only person capable of protecting the country for now.
