MINSK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st August, 2020) Belarusian opposition politician Mikola Statkevich has described as ridiculous the allegations by the country's investigative committee about his links to the group of arrested Russian citizens.
On Thursday, the committee announced that 33 Russians, allegedly employees of the Wagner Group private military company, are suspects in the criminal case on conspiracy to cause mass riots. Statkevich and another major opposition figure, blogger Sergei Tikhonovsky, whose wife Svetlana is a presidential candidate, are also considered to be suspects in the same case.
"In the past, they [the Belarusian authorities] thought that I was capable of teleportation, because they accused me of things I did not do and of being in places I did not visit. Now they think I am also capable of telepathy since I enter [people's] thoughts and conspire with Sergei and the 'Wagnerians.' This is all a load of horsefeathers, to be honest," Statkevich said in a comment, posted by his wife Marina Adamovich on Facebook.
The Belarusian state-run news agency Belta reported on Wednesday that more than 30 Russian nationals had been detained on allegations that they were attempting to destabilize the country's political landscape ahead of the upcoming presidential election. Belarusian Security Council State Secretary Andrei Ravkov said later that a criminal probe into the preparation of terrorist attacks was launched in connection with the detention of the group of Russians believed to be members of the Wagner Group private military company.
In response to the detention, the Kremlin refuted as "slander" claims that Russia could have tasked anyone with destabilizing the situation in Belarus ahead of the presidential election there. Moscow added that Russia even had no such legal term as "private military company" and the government was not aware of any such military enterprises.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the detained Russians were staffers of a private security firm who had been using Belarus as a transit point and were due to go to Istanbul but had missed their flight.
