After going missing a day prior, Belarus House in Ukraine Head Vitaliy Shyshov was found hanged in a park near his place of residence in Kyiv, the National Police reported on Aug. 3.
After leaving his house at 9 a.m. to go for a jog, he never came back.
The authorities have launched a criminal investigation saying that they are looking into a potential murder framed as suicide.
Ihor Klymenko, head of the National Police, said during a press briefing that Shyshov had injuries. “He had certain scratches, torn skin on his nose, on his left knee and on his chest,” said Klymenko.
According to a Belarus House statement, “there is no doubt that this is a planned operation of the Belarus security forces to liquidate a person truly dangerous for the Belarusian regime.”
Shyshov fled from Belarus to Ukraine in the fall of 2020 after participating in countrywide protests against Belarus Dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
The Aug. 9 Belarus presidential elections were marked by fraud. According to the government’s official results, Lukashenko won over 80% of the vote. But an unofficial count suggested that the majority of votes were won by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of political blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, one of two opposition leaders jailed before the vote.
The elections were followed by street protests drawing hundreds of thousands of Belarusians. Later, prominent activists were jailed, tortured or forced out of the country.
In Kyiv, Shyshov became one of the founders of Belarus House in Ukraine, an NGO established to help Belarusians who have fled repressions in their home country.
Read More: Lukashenko falsifies election, declares war on Belarusians
Shyshov organized protests against Lukashenko’s regime and appealed to Ukrainian government agencies to promote bills aimed at providing aid to Belarusians in Ukraine.
According to the organization, the authorities were previously informed of Shyshov being watched. Ukraine’s Belarus House Deputy Head Rodion Batulin said that Shyshov and his girlfriend were followed by unknown individuals and were watched from cars parked near their residence on several occasions.
“We had been warned of provocations, and even of potential kidnapping and assassination. Vitaliy treated those warnings with humor, saying that maybe that’s how Belarus House in Ukraine can leave its info-vacuum,” the organization wrote in an official statement.
Shyshov’s death comes just a day after Belarusian athlete Kristina Timanovskaya was granted a humanitarian visa by Poland after saying she feared for her safety if she returned to Belarus. Timanovskaya claimed that Belarusian officials had tried to force her to go to Belarus ahead of schedule after she criticized her coaches at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In July 2016, Belarus-born journalist Pavel Sheremet was blown up in his car in central Kyiv. Five years on, the murder remains unsolved.
On Jan. 4, Brussels-based publication EUobserver and the Belarusian People’s Tribunal, an independent Belarusian NGO, published recordings linking Sheremet’s murder to the Belarus KGB.
In the tapes, a voice allegedly belonging to ex-Belarusian KGB chief Vadym Zaitsev discusses murdering Sheremet in 2012. Forensic experts have confirmed the authenticity of the voice recording.
