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“He Jogged And, in the Middle of the Route, He Was Attacked”

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“He Jogged And, in the Middle of the Route, He Was Attacked”

An associate of Vitaly Shishov declared a "show execution" of the activist.

On August 3, 2021, Vitaly Shishov, the head of the Belarusian House in Ukraine, was found hanged in Kyiv. His body was found in a park near the Chaika residential complex, a residential complex on the western outskirts of the Ukrainian capital.

The body of Vitaly Shishov was found by an employee of the Belarusian House in Ukraine Yuri Shchuchko, together with the police.

“I think he went for a run as usual. He jogged, and, in the middle of the route, he was attacked, and the sentence was carried out: the man was hanged,” he said in an interview with the Russian service of Radio LRT.

According to Yu. Shchuchko, Vitaly noticed surveillance - suspicious cars and suspicious people who appeared in the same place where Vitaly was.

“Once his friend noticed that she was being filmed by two people who introduced themselves as Belarusians. There were such moments for about half a year. And yesterday, in a conversation on the phone, he said: "Look after Bozhena (V. Shishov's girlfriend - ed.), I have a bad feeling," said Yuri Shchuchko.

According to him, the country's law enforcement agencies are currently investigating, but everything will depend on "political leverage."

“Our organization will work the way it did. Vitaly is our nominee director, many media connections were tied to him, but this does not negate the fact that we must continue our work, no matter how the team feels. I don't know, but I feel myself. Like a Japanese samurai. I, too, was warned, like a couple of other activists of the Belarusian House in Ukraine, about the possibility of physical liquidation,” Yu. Shchuchko said in an interview with the Russian service of Radio LRT.

“I think it was a demonstrative execution,” he added.

Vitaly Shishov headed the Belarusian House in Ukraine, a non-profit organization that helped Belarusians who left the country for political reasons with legalization, housing, and employment in a neighboring country. Shishov was the administrator of several Telegram channels recognized as extremist in Belarus.

Representatives of the Belarusian House in Ukraine met with deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, discussed possible sanctions against Belarus, and collected signatures.

Vitaly, a resident of the Belarusian city of Rechytsa, was forced to move to Kyiv in the fall of 2020, when mass protests against the falsification of the results of the presidential elections began in Belarus - in response, the regime of Aliaksandr Lukashenka launched a campaign of repression.

“In the Belarusian House in Ukraine, he undertook absolutely all spheres of activity: helping those who had moved, holding actions against the Lukashenka regime, appealing to government agencies to promote bills that would help our compatriots, forming a diaspora in Ukraine. Vitaly was under surveillance. The facts were notified to the police accordingly. Also, we were repeatedly warned by both local sources and our people in Belarus about all kinds of provocations - up to kidnapping and liquidation. Vitaly treated these warnings stoically and with humor, stating that, at least this way, it is possible that the Belarusian House in Ukraine will come out of the information vacuum. There is no doubt that this is an operation planned by the Chekists to liquidate a really dangerous Belarusian citizen,” the BDU representatives say.

Vitaly's friend, Bozhena Zholud, also a native of Rechytsa, told the journalists of the Belarusian editorial office of Radio Liberty the following about him:

“Vitaly did not have parents and family - everyone died. He worked as a freelance IT specialist. He never complained about being followed. But recently, Vitaly has become more attentive - it happened, he looked what kind of cars drove up, who got out of them. There were no explicit threats to him, but he had a bad feeling. He did not tell me about this, but he wrote to one of our acquaintances a week before the tragedy: I have a bad feeling, if anything happens, look after Bozhena. No strangers were approaching Vitaliy in particular. Some people came up to me once in the city center - as it turned out later, they were recording and filming.”

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