Three Ukrainians arrested in Belarus during a police crackdown on protests over alleged electoral fraud were released from a detention center in the early hours of Aug. 14. They are currently in the Embassy of Ukraine in Minsk, Hromadske reported.
Kostyantyn Reutsky, Yevhen Vasyliev and Oksana Alyoshina were detained on the streets of Minsk on Aug. 12. After they were taken into custody, Ukrainian diplomats started searching for the three in pre-trial detention centers. The Embassy of Ukraine in Belarus sent two notes to the Belarusian Foreign Ministry requesting information about the whereabouts and grounds for detaining the Ukrainian citizens.
Reutsky and Vasyliev are journalists and members of the Vostok SOS human rights organization devoted to helping victims of war in the Donbas. There is little information available about Alyoshina.
In a video recorded upon Reutsky’s release and published by the Belorusian news website Tut.by, the journalist says that the detectives forced him to sign a police protocol without allowing him to read it. Those who declined to sign were beaten, he added.
“They are completely safe now,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement on Aug. 14.
“They did not violate any laws of the Republic of Belarus and were there with the sole purpose of obtaining reliable information about the events that are taking place there,” Zelensky said.
Ukrainian diplomats are currently negotiating the release of another Ukrainain, Roman Shyshka, who was detained in Brest on Aug. 11, according to Zelensky. Nine Ukrainian citizens detained in Vitebsk earlier have been released.
Protests erupted across Belarus on Aug. 9 after incumbent Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory in the presidential election. Unofficial polling indicted that his opponent, opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, actually won the majority of the vote.
Belarusian law enforcement launched a violent crackdown on protesters, killing at least two people and injuring hundreds across the country. They detained over 7,000 people, including dozens of journalists. The authorities also forced Tikhanovskaya to flee to Lithuania. On Aug. 14, she published a video address to the nation calling for peaceful nationwide demonstrations to demand a recount of the votes.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has advised citizens against traveling to Belarus “until the situation stabilizes.”
