Concern over training of paramilitary force in Poland, Lithuania for disrupting situation in Belarus

Paramilitary units are being trained in Poland and Lithuania in order to destabilize the situation in Belarus, the Belarusian Internal Affairs Ministry told BelTA.

Personnel of the Central Office for Fight Against Organized Crime and Corruption (GUBOPiK) of the Belarusian Internal Affairs Ministry received information about the creation of a paramilitary extremist force titled as Pospolitoye Rusheniye in Poland and Lithuania and about the units the force is made up of.

These formations work together with the extremist forces BYPOL, the mobilization plan Peramoga [victory in Belarusian], and the United Transitional Cabinet in order to organize infringements upon the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and foundations of the constitutional system and public security of Belarus.

As intended by the creators, once they are trained, participants of the paramilitary force, who are fugitives from justice, representatives of diasporas, and university students, who study abroad, will return to Belarus under plausible excuses. They will later unite into an already trained “fifth column” for the sake of carrying out acts of sabotage and terrorism, covert intelligence work. This organization is also supposed to be used to destabilize the situation inside the country during election campaigns in 2024-2025.

Investigators have used GUBOPiK data to open criminal cases and combine them into one criminal investigation into actions of Valery Sakhashchik, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Aleksandr Azarov, and other individuals. These people are accused of creating an extremist force or participating in it. Actions of over 200 people are being looked into as part of the criminal case. Belarusian law enforcers continue working to identify activists and representatives of the diasporas, who participate in extremist initiatives, including by examining their digital footprints in the Internet. Once these individuals return to Belarus, exhaustive measures will be taken to qualify their actions.