Operation On Coercion Into 'Special Operation'

Iryna Khalip
23.12.2022, 14:41
42,042

The FSB operates in Belarusian cities.

Previously, they clustered mainly in the Homel region, around their border. Now they have reached Hrodna. I suspect, however, that they are already everywhere, only we do not notice this, because they also have one head, two arms and two legs — the most successful disguise.

I'm not talking about green men, I'm talking about the FSB.

On Wednesday in Hrodna, FSB officers detained Daniil Krinari, an activist and poet from St. Petersburg. Apparently, from Hrodna Daniil wanted to get to Poland or Lithuania. In Russia, he was already a suspect in a criminal case. On March 6, on the eve of the anti-war action, one of the St. Petersburg police stations received an anonymous call about mining. Then the police went around the addresses of local oppositionists who managed to speak out against the war, with searches and arrests. Then they used this method in view of every protest. On September 24, on the eve of a large action against mobilization, Daniil Krinari, journalist Viktoria Arefieva (they broke down her door), and nine other St. Petersburg activists and human rights activists were detained — allegedly in the case of telephone terrorism. 11 detainees were sent to a temporary detention center for 48 hours. Two days later, they were released as suspects under an obligation to appear. Probably, Daniil assumed that the case of telephone terrorism is such a common “excuse” for the special services, which allows them to break in with searches, take equipment and phones out of the house and cook up new criminal cases at an accelerated pace. That's why he fled St. Petersburg.

He was not summoned for interrogation and was not put on the wanted list. Logically, if a Russian under suspicion fled, they should have been put on the wanted list — first federal, then interstate. And there already the Belarusian “allies” would have joined. They generally cooperate in every way, changing scenarios. Sometimes they give each other gifts, as, for example, happened with Ihar Alinevich during his first arrest — they simply detained him in Moscow, put a bag over his head, and drove him in a minibus to the very Belarusian border, where they handed him over to dear neighbors. Sometimes they take people straight from boarding the plane to another flight, like journalist Henadz Mazheika, and send them to Minsk instead of Warsaw, and there he was already met with a nicely prepared paddy wagon. Sometimes, to everyone's surprise, they turn on the mode of performing all paperwork, as in the case of Yana Pinchuk, who was detained at the request of the Belarusian Investigatory Committee and held in a pre-trial detention center in St. Petersburg for almost a year while extradition trials were going on. The Belarusian lawyers challenged the extradition decision in three instances. Yana was nevertheless extradited, but not with a bag over her head. This is not a consolation, of course, and I don’t recall these cases for that — I just remind you that the methods can be different. We can also recall Ukrainian Pavlo Hryb, who in 2017 was detained by the FSB in Homel and taken to the Smolensk region. But then they, at least, pretended that they were not even in Belarus at all. It was not for nothing that they chose not Minsk or Hrodna, but Homel, where they lured the Ukrainian, as a venue for their operation then: Russia was nearby, if anything, they would say that they were going for mushrooms, got lost and found themselves at the Homel railway station.

And now they have reached Hrodna. Daniil Krinari was not brought to his native St. Petersburg — he was brought to Moscow, and the Lefortovo Court will choose the measure of restraint. So, it is in the Lefortovo prison — the FSB pre-trial detention center, an analogue of the Belarusian “Amerikanka” — that he will be imprisoned. So the operation to capture Krinari was planned in advance and in detail. And the FSB officers did not lure him to the border with Russia, but calmly proceeded to where Daniil was, and just as calmly grabbed a man in a foreign country, several hundred kilometers from the Russian border. If anyone thinks that Belarus is not participating in the war against Ukraine, here is the main proof for you: the FSB operating in our cities. No words, protocols, or announcements are needed.

Officially, there is no war at all. In Russia, it is still called a special military operation. The war in Chechnya was officially called a counter-terrorist operation there, and the war in Georgia was called an operation to enforce peace. It seems that regular meetings between Lukashenka and Putin, their endless telephone conversations and whispering on the sidelines of various CIS, CSTO and EurAsEC summits are such a quiet creeping phase of coercion into a special operation. And judging by how calmly and confidently the FSB officers are acting on our territory, the phase was a success.

Operation On Coercion Into 'Special Operation'

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