‘Everyone In Minibus Laughed Out Loud’: What For Hrodna KGB Showed ‘Action Movie’ To Belarusians?

A foreigner in a wig put Lukashenka in an awkward position.

According to Belast, the shooting and explosions in a residential building in Hrodna gave rise to many versions. On the one hand, a foreigner sent to Belarus by “fugitive extremists” and planning terrorist attacks, on the other hand, a fake by the special services.

The KGB claims that security services killed a man who resisted arrest on March 19 in Hrodna: he fired an assault rifle and threw grenades. Aliaksandr Lukashenka praised the special services for their "brilliant operation".

Lukashenka also spoke about the "thwarted plans of our enemies", but did not specify what kind of enemies they were, did not tell about the citizenship of the "killed" one, and only instructed "to inform the publicity about the results of this operation".

State media informed as best they could. They showed “police footage” with shooting and explosions, surveillance video of the suspect and an apartment with rubble and damage. They said that the man had a Russian passport, however, a fake one. They stated that the security services received information about "the intentions of fugitive extremists to smuggle one of their supporters from Poland to Belarus" in February this year.

Lukashenka called the security services and the people to unite when visiting Khatyn and speaking about the “Hrodna terrorist” on March 22:

“What I would like is to have our people united somehow. People are seeing everything. I want you to tell us in time: some stranger, someone in a wig, the wrong nose, and so on. The unification of the special services, the power bloc, and our people are very important now.

He also identified the owners of the apartment rented by the “terrorist” as guilty.

Lukashenka also said that the "criminal" could not cope with the wig and makeup, "he put on some kind of nose". “We’ve caught him on cameras, we saw him in Mahiliou, in my opinion, we were watching him for several days across Belarus,” he said.

"AgroHollywood"

In social networks they joked, calling the “police shots” “agro-Hollywood”: “Everyone in the minibus laughed out loud.” There are really a lot of questions about this video, Vadzim Mazheika, the coordinator of the Our Opinion Belarusian expert network, said in an interview with Belsat:

“We are being shown some shots fired at an empty apartment in which nothing is visible, they show us the ceiling, some kind of panel house - there are no specifics. It seems that this is some kind of production.

The expert believes that this story is very similar to the other "high-profile" crimes - "rats in the water pipe", a jeep breaking through the border with Ukraine, "Frau A's case". and "Nick and Mike". Mr Mazheika did not rule out that the current authorities would act according to the old scheme in this case as usual: high-profile accusations, some supposed police footage and then they will be silent. The topic would disappear from the information agenda.

Questions without answers

This story left many questions. It is not known where the “terrorist” came from, from Russia or from the European Union: if across the border with the EU countries, how was he allowed in with a fake passport? Where did he get weapons and explosives from (brought from Russia (its border is unguarded)? If from the EU, how did not they notice the arsenal? What is his citizenship, is his identity established, why can’t a criminal with such big plans be disguised because of a clumsy wig? And, finally, where is the body? If the deceased was a foreigner, then it seems that some state should be interested in its citizen.

Vadim Mozheiko stated that the "special operation" was arranged to confirm the thesis of propaganda that constantly intimidates all with some "fugitive extremists". Like, they are planning terrorist attacks in Belarus: look, here a terrorist is.

Anatol Kotau, a former employee of the Lukashenka administration, said in an interview with Svaboda that it was “showdowns between law enforcement agencies” in Hrodna, and a random person was killed as a result. Mr Kotau claims that this is "a citizen of one of the Western European countries", but "not Lithuania and not Poland".