Anatoly Kotov's Relatives Have Not Received A Response From The Turkish Authorities
2- 3.09.2025, 12:30
- 3,890
They believe that the Belarusian political scientist may be kidnapped.
Former employee of Lukashenko's administration, political scientist, head of the international department of the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Fund Anatoli Kotov, who disappeared in Turkey on August 21, has not yet been found.
Kotov's wife told Radiyo Svaboda that she has not received any answers from the Turkish authorities engaged in the search. She has no news about her husband at the moment, "neither good nor bad." Family and friends of the political scientist believe that he may have been kidnapped by Russian or Belarusian security services.
Reminder, the Turkish media IHA established that Kotov arrived in Istanbul from Warsaw on August 21 and the same day flew to the Turkish city of Trabzon.
The Belarusian political scientist, according to the publication, left Turkey through the sea border crossing Trabzon flight at 18:35. The media published a photo of a Polish travel document for foreigners (polski dokument podróży dla cudzoziemca) in the name of Anatoly Kotov.
The Istanbul bureau of Deutsche Welle managed to talk to a source in the Trabzon police. The source confirmed that Kotov left Trabzon on August 21, the day he arrived in Turkey. According to him, Kotov traveled to Sochi on a private yacht. It is known that there is no regular ferry service from this port. Cargo and fishing vessels, cruise ships and private boats leave from there. Theoretically, it is possible to get from Trabzon by sea to all countries in the Black Sea, but the fastest way is to neighboring Georgia or Russia.
Neither Kotov nor the people who accompanied him had any legal problems, for example, issues with documents, "nothing looked suspicious," the source said, so the Turkish police have no reason to investigate.
How many people were accompanying him and who they were, he could not say. According to unconfirmed reports, the yacht was already waiting for Kotov when he arrived from Istanbul to Trabzon.
In the early 2000s, Anatoly Kotov worked at the Foreign Ministry. From 2006 to 2015, he held various positions at the Belarusian Embassy in Poland, rising from third secretary to senior advisor to the ambassador.
In 2015, he returned to Minsk, where he moved from the Foreign Ministry to work at the National Olympic Committee, which at the time was personally headed by Alexander Lukashenko. Kotov first worked there as a leading specialist, but soon took the position of secretary general.
Then worked in Lukashenko's administration, where he took the position of deputy head of the department of financing state bodies of the Main Financial Department of the dictator's administration.
On August 18, 2020, Kotov resigned from Lukashenko's administration, the same day he signed an open letter of Belarusian athletes who spoke out against election fraud and condemned violence by security forces. Then he moved to Warsaw. In recent years, he cooperated with the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Fund.
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