In the no man’s land before the Ukrainian border checkpoint, she tore up her passport. Then, she climbed out the back window of the car and walked back toward Belarus.
That’s how Mariya Kolesnikova, the only member of the Belarusian opposition trio to stay in Minsk, thwarted a special services’ operation to expel her from her country along with two other members of the opposition Coordination Council.
They arrived in Ukraine on Sept. 8 and described the ordeal at a press conference in Kyiv.
In the special services’ plot, Anton Rodnenkov, press secretary of the Coordination Council, and Ivan Kravtsov, its executive secretary, were supposed to drive with Kolesnikova into Ukraine in a car, pretending to be leaving voluntarily.
The three had been abducted on Sept. 7. At around 11 p.m. on the same day, they were taken to the no man’s land between Belarus and Ukraine, escorted by some three dozen special services officers. The officers also brought Kravtsov’s BMW.
The organizers had everything prepared: the three activists’ passports, medical insurance required for entry into Ukraine, plane tickets to Turkey for Rodnenkov and Kravtsov, tickets to Munich via Vienna for Kolesnikova and even falsified COVID-19 test results.
To make their departure more convincing, several masked officers took Kravtsov to the woods where one of them held up a lamp as the activist filmed a video saying that they had decided to leave Belarus. That decision would not seem implausible: Two other leaders of the campaign against President Alexander Lukashenko had already fled, and all but one member of the Coordination Council’s presidium were either detained or forced to flee.
Then the plan went off the rails.
After Kolesnikova was shoved into the back seat of the BMW, she tore her passport into small pieces, threw them out, climbed out of the window — the officers had ensured the doors couldn’t be unlocked from the inside — and walked back toward the Belarusian border. Without a passport, she could not enter Ukraine. She was taken away by the officers, and her whereabouts are still unknown.
A Belarusian border official later claimed that Rodnenkov and Kravtsov pushed Kolesnikova out of the car, drove to Ukraine without her and she was detained.
But the two men said that, after Kolesnikova had turned around, the officers tried to detain them and block their way to Ukraine.
“Had we been detained again, they could have staged this (scenario) again endlessly. It was right to ruin their plan,” Kravtsov said at a press conference in Kyiv on Sept. 8 about their decision to escape. “They didn’t send Mariya (to Ukraine), and they lost us.”
“They sent 35 well-trained and strong men to remove three people (from the country), and they failed the operation. It turned into a public disaster for the Belarusian authorities,” Rodnenkov added.
Asked why they didn’t do the same as Kolesnikova, Rodnenkov said: “I am not able to do something like this, maybe that’s why she is the opposition leader and I am the press secretary.”
At the border, Kolesnikova resisted, yelled she wasn’t going anywhere and continued to demand a lawyer. “You could envy her energy after 12 hours of interrogation,” Rodnenkov noted.
The two men arrived at the Ukrainian border checkpoint on the morning of Sept. 8, where they spoke to the border guards and officers of Ukraine’s Security Service.
Belarusian opposition activists Anton Rodnenkov (L) and Ivan Kravtsov (R) speak at a press conference in Kyiv, shortly after leaving Belarus, on Sept. 8, 2020. (Photo by Volodymyr Petrov)
Rodnenkov and Kravtsov were kidnapped on Sept. 7 outside of Kolesnikova’s apartment building. That same day, a witness saw her being shoved into a minivan by several men in civilian clothing in the center of Minsk. Phone tracking software showed that her phone was still at her home.
The two men were brought to the Department for Financial Crimes of the Committee of State Control. There they were separated and had their belongings confiscated. Rodnenkov was handcuffed, had a black sack placed over his head and was left sitting in a room for hours.
Three plainclothes officers who didn’t introduce themselves interrogated Kravtsov for over five hours. They showed him some papers which ostensibly proved he had broken the law at his previous workplaces. They threatened him with a criminal case for abuse of office and a prison term of between five and 12 years if he didn’t agree to participate in the operation to remove Kolesnikova from Belarus.
The officers said it was necessary for “de-escalation” in the country, according to Kravtsov.
In another room, Rodnenkov was threatened with 18 months behind bars in Kravtsov’s case.
Under coercion, the men agreed to participate in Kolesnikova’s removal from Belarus. They knew she would be forcibly taken to the border.
But despite growing pressure and mass arrests, she had resolved to stay in Belarus, where workers at state enterprises had gone on strike and massive anti-government protests had continued for four consecutive weeks following the disputed Aug. 9 presidential election, in which Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory.
Two other women who led the opposition campaign in the elections, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Veronika Tsepkalo, had previously fled to Lithuania and Poland, respectively.
Tikhanovskaya’s sudden departure on Aug. 11, two days after the election she is believed to have won, was similarly facilitated by the Belarusian authorities, according to the members of the Coordination Council.
Kolesnikova didn’t want to follow suit.
“I am sure that Kolesnikova’s act was a surprise for the regime,” Kravtsov said at the press conference in Kyiv.
“The illusions about Western puppet-masters have not been destroyed yet. The regime is still not ready to admit that the majority of the Belarusian people are behind what is happening now.”
