Belarus Weekly: Russian, Belarusian security services plan violent attacks on Belarusian diaspora

Polish security agency to investigate disappearance of Belarus’s opposition activist amid fears of foreign involvement.

Russian, Belarusian security services plan violent attacks on Belarusian diaspora, Lithuanian Security Department says.  

Russian FSB detains Belarus citizen allegedly preparing to carry out "terrorist act" on behalf of Ukraine's SBU.

Lithuania to fortify second Suwalki Gap route, viewed as one of the most likely targets for a future Russian attack on NATO, Politico reports.

Viasna Human Rights Center volunteer released after serving full term.

Poland’s Internal Security Agency to investigate disappearance of Belarus opposition activist

The case of missing Belarusian opposition activist Anzhalika Melnikava has been handed over to Poland’s Internal Security Agency, the ABW, to check for the potential involvement of foreign intelligence services, Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported on April 16.

Exiled Belarusian political activist and speaker of the Belarusian opposition’s Coordination Council Melnikava went missing on March 25. Four weeks later, her whereabouts remain unknown, although signals from her phone were reportedly traced to Belarus, raising alarm among members of the exiled Belarusian opposition, who fear being targeted by the Belarusian regime’s agents.

According to Rzeczpospolita, the disappearance case, initially opened by police in the Polish capital Warsaw, has been transferred to the National Prosecutor’s Office’s Lublin Department of Organized Crime and Corruption, which specializes in investigating the most serious crimes — including espionage. The move suggests that there might be evidence of extraordinary circumstances, like kidnapping or murder, that needs to be investigated by a higher authority, Michal Potocki, the editor of Poland’s largest legal journal, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, told U.S. broadcaster RFE/RL.

Previous police enquiries failed to clarify the circumstances of Melnikava’s disappearance, with several versions of events being discussed, ranging from kidnapping by a foreign intelligence agency, or that Melnikava was acting on behalf of such services, or the misappropriation of the opposition’s funds.

The National Prosecutor’s Office representative, Katarzyna Calów-Jaszewska, told the press that the ABW was investigating the case under charges of deprivation of liberty and other undisclosed articles of the Criminal Code.

A former Coca-Cola executive, Anzhalika Melnikava joined anti-Lukashenko protests in Belarus in 2020 and left the country fearing prosecution. In May 2024, she was elected speaker of the Coordination Council, heading the new incarnation of the exiled opposition structure, branded as the “proto-parliament.” Melnikava handled funds for the Coordination Council and Cyberpartizans, a hacker group behind the attacks on the regime’s digital infrastructure.

According to Poland’s Internal Affairs Ministry, Melnikava had not been in Poland for several weeks at the time of her reported disappearance, and one of her devices was traced to Belarus on March 19. Conflicting evidence says that she had traveled to the United Kingdom while her two daughters were in Belarus with their father. The family is not planning to report her disappearance, journalists have learned.

Notably, Belarusian propaganda has not mentioned the case, unlike that of the former volunteer fighter in Ukraine, Vasyl Verameichyk, whose extradition from Vietnam to Belarus was covered by Belarusian state-run television.

Melnikava’s case appeared in the background of Belarus’s law enforcers’ constant attempts to silence exiled opposition figures. All 257 contenders for the Coordination Council seats had criminal investigations opened against them.

Polish prosecutors are also now investigating an alleged plot to murder Pavel Latushka, another prominent opposition leader. Moreover, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s agents are also suspected of being behind the murders of Belarusian opposition activist Vital Shyshou in 2021, and journalist Pavel Sharamet in 2016 in Kyiv.

Russian, Belarusian secret services plot violent attacks on Belarusian diaspora in Lithuania, State Security Department says

Lithuania’s Department of State Security or VSD said on April 23 that it had uncovered a plot by Russian and Belarusian intelligence services to commit violent attacks against Belarusians living in the country.

Lithuania, which neighbors Belarus, hosts 50,000 Belarusian exiles and the office of Belarusian opposition leader Svitlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was forced to flee her homeland after reportedly beating Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential elections. Lithuania has sided with Belarusians protesting Lukashenko’s contested “re-election” and has faced a backlash from his regime in the forms of an artificial migration crisis, a crackdown on the Lithuanian diaspora in Belarus, and Lukashenko’s frequent verbal attacks on the country.

The Russian and Belarusian intelligence services have stepped up their operations in Lithuania, with the first attempts to commit violent attacks on representatives of the Belarusian community being recorded, according to the VSD.

The VSD found foreign agents trying to lure Belarusian students in Vilnius with an easy one-time gig to a remote location where they were to be ambushed and beaten. The would-be attackers were provided with exact locations, timing and details of the victims’ appearance.

“The organizers are trying to create the appearance of a conflict between two warring forces — Belarusians promoting the ideology of Litvinism, and Lithuanian groups allegedly opposing them,” the VSD said.

In 2023, Belarusian intelligence was allegedly behind the so-called “Litvinism” movement — a fringe historical Belarusian revisionist idea that claims the Lithuanian capital Vilnius does not belong to Lithuania. Graffiti in crooked Cyrillic reading “Vilnius is ours” started appearing in Vilnius, and Lithuanian politicians received threats from alleged “Litvinist” groups.

In 2024, the attacks turned to buildings belonging to representatives of the Belarusian diaspora. Vandals set fire to a Belarusian house in Vilnius, shot at a chapel with pneumatic weapons, and left graffiti in poorly-spelled Lithuanian calling for Tsikhanouskaya to leave the country.

The violent attack on Belarusians was to be the next step in this staged “conflict,” the VSD said.

The size of the Belarusian diaspora in Lithuania has shrunk significantly, dropping from over 62,000 in January 2024 to 53,700 in April 2025, according to Lithuania’s Migration Department.

In 2024 alone, nearly 600 residence permits for Belarusians were revoked on national security grounds, often due to their holders having served in the military in the past or even having been employed in non-sensitive roles like bank call centers.

Russia’s FSB detains Belarusian allegedly planning ‘terrorist act on behalf of SBU’

Russia’s Federal Security Service or FSB announced on April 18 that it had detained a Belarusian citizen who had been “preparing a terrorist act in the interests of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU),” according to an official FSB press release.

The FSB claimed the detained foreign citizen was recruited by the SBU in December 2024 to gather information about the locations of Black Sea Fleet ships, Russian army personnel in Krasnodar Krai, and to carry out "terrorist attacks."

In a video released by the FSB, an unidentifiable detainee claims to be a Belarusian citizen. With his face blurred in the footage, he recites the script, stating that his “SBU curator” instructed him to carry out the attack “to disrupt negotiations between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine” and escalate the conflict.

Russian agents allegedly found a 2.5-kilogram improvised explosive device that they said was to have been planted in an administrative building in Novorossiysk. The FSB opened a criminal case on the suspect on charges of preparing to commit a terrorist act — charges punishable by 10-20 years in prison.

This is not the first such case reported by Russia. In December 2023, a Belarusian national, Siarhei Yerameyeu, was detained in Omsk and accused of blowing up two trains on the Baikal-Amur Mainline in Buryatia. Yerameyeu is still in Russian custody awaiting trial.

Belarusian and Russian law enforcers are notorious for obtaining false confessions by using various forms of psychological pressure and physical torture.

Lithuania to reinforce second route through Suwalki gap near Belarus, Politico reports

Lithuania is to upgrade and fortify the second main road leading through the Suwalki gap, the NATO choke point squeezed between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and its ally Belarus, Politico reported on April 18.

The Suwalki gap is a 100-kilometer-wide stretch of NATO territory connecting Poland and Lithuania, bordered by Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad, which is viewed as a prime target in any potential Russian military attack on the alliance.

“These roads (are) critical to us from a security and defense perspective,” Lithuanian Deputy Defense Minister Tomas Godliauskas told Politico. “They’ve always been part of our civil-military planning as key ground routes for allied support during a crisis.”

Currently, all military mobility between Lithuania and Poland is ensured by Via Baltica, the road between Lithuania’s former capital Kaunas and Warsaw, and the high-speed railroad Rail Baltica. The project will upgrade 113 kilometers of road and renovate eight bridges from the capital, Vilnius, to the Polish border town of Augustow. It is expected to be completed by 2028.

Lithuania expects to secure European funding for the project, which the Baltic state and Poland have jointly financed.

A 2022 report by Politico labeled the Suwalki gap “the most dangerous place on Earth.”

After Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine it soon faced sanctions, which in turn prompted Lithuania’s national railroad carrier to refuse transit of certain goods from Belarus to Kaliningrad, including coal, metals, and building materials.

At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s staunch ally, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, said Lithuania’s decision to comply with EU sanctions “resembles a declaration of war.” Over a year later, in November 2023, First Deputy State Secretary of the Belarusian Security Council Pavel Muraveiko claimed Belarus has every right to “pave a corridor” through Lithuania to transit goods.

Security tensions in the region are set to rise: In September 2025, Belarus is holding Zapad (West) military drills involving 13,000 Russian troops. According to the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys, the actual scale of Zapad exercises has a history of far exceeding the publicly declared numbers.

Threats against NATO member states neighboring Belarus were heard again when the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergey Naryshkin, visited Minsk on April 15 and claimed that Poland and the Baltic states were “highly aggressive” and would be the “first to suffer” if there were any “NATO aggression” against the Russia-Belarus Union State.

Viasna volunteer released after serving full term in prison

Andrei Chapiuk, the volunteer of Belarus’s oldest human rights watchdog, the Viasna Human Rights Center, was set free on April 18 after serving five years and nine months in prison.

Meanwhile, four other Viasna advocates remain behind bars.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Viasna chairman Ales Bialiatski and three of his colleagues — the center’s deputy chairman Valiantsin Stefanovich, lawyer Uladzimir Labkovich, and volunteer coordinator Marfa Rabkova — are serving almost decade-long prison terms after being prosecuted for their human rights advocacy.

Belarus’s oldest human rights organization, Viasna has been documenting electoral fraud and human rights abuses by the regime of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko since 1996.

Chapiuk was detained in October 2020 on charges of inciting social enmity, participating in mass discord, and being a member of a criminal organization. Sentenced to five years and nine months in prison over his involvement in human rights activism, the political prisoner was also officially declared to be an extremist and terrorist. Before his release, a handcuffed Chapiuk was taken for interrogation, Viasna reported.

Accused of “financing protests,” Bialiatski received a nearly 10-year prison term, while two of his colleagues were punished for 7-9 years. Rabkova received an extremely harsh sentence of almost 15 years. All four have health conditions that reduce their chances of surviving imprisonment.

Lukashenko’s authorities branded Viasna an extremist organization in 2023, outlawing any communication between activists and the victims of repression within the country. Over 1,200 political prisoners are still held behind bars in Belarus in the aftermath of widespread anti-Lukashenko public protests in 2020.