Chronicle of events related to the detention of militants / combatants of the PMC (Private Military Company) “Wagner Group” in Belarus

On June 20, 2020, President of Belarus Aleksander Lukashenko personally signed Decree No. 227, which granted GardService LLC the right to provide security services with the right to use weapons[1].

This private security organization is allowed, in compliance with the requirements of the law, to acquire ownership, store and transfer to its employees’ service and civilian weapons and ammunition for the provision of operation-wide security services. “GardService” is obliged to inform the Ministry of Internal Affairs about the conclusion and termination of contracts for the provision of operation-wide security services.

Attention: “GuardService” is obliged to inform the Ministry of Internal Affairs about conclusion of a contract with someone before signing the agreement.

“GardService” is a typical “bogus” company for the Belarusian corruption system.

On July 24, 2020, Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “To the Maidan, if there are no people of our own (we have few “maidanned people” (Supporters of the 2004 Ukrainian Orange Revolution)), they will be pulled up from outside. These are professional military men, bandits who are specially trained, mainly within the framework of PMCs (private military companies) around the world, and earn a lot of money on provocations in certain states[2]“

Attention: before that, Alexander Lukashenko had never mentioned PMCs (private military companies) as members of the “Maidan” in his speeches.

On July 24, 2020, 32 Russians travelled in the direction of Belarus via a Mercedes bus. The owner of the company is Vladislav Kumpan (https://vk.com/prokatbus). The driver who drove the Russians was Gennady Kumpan (father of the company owner, 47 years old).

For some unknown reason, the bus was delayed, as a result, the Russians were late for the plane.

On July 25, 2020, the “Peacemaker” added Sergei Tikhanovsky, a YouTube blogger and husband of candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, in his database for his visit to Crimea from Russian side at 2017[3].

Attention: on July 24, 2020, publications about Sergei Tikhanovsky, who visited Crimea in 2017, appear in “InfoNapalma” and in “Nasha Niva”, simultaneously with Lukashenko’s statement about militants from private military companies who are preparing the “Maidan” in Belarus.

On the night of July 24-25, 32 Russian citizens settled in the Johannes Rau Minsk International Educational Center (IBB Minsk). 32 citizens presented their passports and allowed to make photocopies of them upon check-in[4].

What is known about IBB[5]:

Is built with money from the German Foreign Ministry and donations from German citizens.
Cooperates very closely with the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, first of all with Vladimir Makei.
All support programs for the German Foreign Ministry and other German structures operate mainly through the IBB, including the Belarus Support Program (BSP) “Crossing Borders” which has been implemented since 2002 on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ). All programs are run in partnership with the Belarusian Foreign Ministry and with its approval.
Co-founder is Minsk City Executive Committee.
Is under the close attention of the KGB and other special services of Belarus, since a lot of diplomatic events as well as non-state seminars, meetings, etc. are held. It is impossible to rent a single conference hall without providing the program of the event in advance, which is coordinated with the Minsk City Executive Committee, the KGB, etc.
IBB (11d Gazeta Avenue, Minsk) is located 200 meters from the German Embassy (consulate department) (11d Gazeta Avenue, Minsk).

This is the most unfortunate place to settle in Minsk if you are preparing an armed coup.

Any group of 32 people in the IBB immediately attracts particular attention of the KGB and the maximum that can be done is to sleep one night.

Questions will begin to be addressed to the group already next morning – on condition that there were no preliminary agreements with the Minsk City Executive Committee or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about their settlement.

And this suggests that whoever it was, they did not plan anything in Minsk.

Because if this group was preparing an armed coup, then they would not have rented an apartment for a day, would have concealed their names, and, moreover, they would not have allowed making photocopies of passports.

But the check-in at the IBB of all the hotels in Minsk suggests that the Belarusian Foreign Ministry is somehow involved in the case of the “Wagner Group” PMC.

On July 27, 2020, 32 Russian citizens moved to the “Belorusochka” sanatorium[6].

What is known about the sanatorium “Belorusochka”:

“Belorusochka” is headed by the former head of the Main Clinical Center of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus, Colonel Savitsky Svyatoslav Fyodorovich (a person, among other things, is closely connected with military intelligence), he is the best friend of Directorate of the President, Viktor Sheiman[7].
The sanatorium belongs to the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus, headed by Mikhail Orda. Mikhail Orda – Chief of Staff of Alexander Lukashenko.
Mikhail Orda unexpectedly came to the “Belorusochka” sanatorium on the eve of the Russians settling up in there[8].

On July 29, 2020, 32 Russians were detained in the “Belorusochka” sanatorium, allegedly by a foreign private military company. The detention took place in a surprisingly peaceful and humane manner. The entire list of detainees got into the network a couple of hours after the arrest, and through state news agencies (which is impossible without a deliberate leak from the Belarusian special services), and these Russians were immediately included in the Ukrainian base “Peacemaker”[9][10].

On July 29, 2020, the well-known Russian political strategist Vitaly Shklyarov (he worked in the elections for Barack Obama and made the campaign of Ksenia Sobchak), a native of Gomel (like Sergei Tikhanovsky), was detained. It was stated on ONT (Belarusian state television) that, according to the intelligence services, he consulted the administrator of groups in various social networks, united by the common name “Country for Life”. Although the presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said that she don’t know Vitaly Shklyarov and had never worked with him[11].

On July 30, 2020, a criminal case was initiated on the preparation of terrorist attacks in Belarus. State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus Andrei Ravkov called these citizens of Russia “Russian mercenaries”.

At the same time, this criminal case was initiated against oppositionists who are behind bars – Sergei Tikhanovsky and Nikolai Statkevich[12].

That is, 33 Russian citizens, as well as political strategist Vitaly Shklyarov, blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky and opposition leader Nikolai Statkevich are involved in the same criminal case on the preparation of terrorist acts in Belarus.

On July 30, 2020, Russian Ambassador to Belarus Dmitry Mezentsev said “the reason for the Russians to come to Belarus was a contract concluded with one of the commercial firms, which is registered here in Belarus, and each of the Russians who arrived had an employment contract with this enterprise”[13]

We think that it was a labor contract with GardService LLC, opened according to Alexander Lukashenko’s personal decree No. 227, but this version requires a re-check. If this is true, then this agreement with the Russians could not have been concluded without the direct participation of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs (see decree No. 227).

On July 30, 2020, the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Russia to Belarus, Dmitry Mezentsev and Minister Counselor, Acting Head of the Embassy of Ukraine in Belarus, Pyotr Vrublevsky were invited respectively to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus[14].

Attention: The Belarusian Foreign Ministry directly announced the agreements reached with the Ukrainian side on intensifying interaction between border agencies and strengthening the border regime in order to prevent destabilization of the situation in both countries.

Conclusions from this chronicle:

Why did Alexander Lukashenko need to arrest these Russians? It is clear that if Alexander Lukashenko shoots and kills peaceful demonstrators, the West will have to react somehow and, possibly, even impose sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko, including economic ones.

The only option when the West turns a blind eye to bloody crackdowns, shootings of people and the use of force is to prove to the West that these are not peaceful pensioners and housewives, but militants from Russia, i.e. The Kremlin was preparing to overthrow Lukashenko through an armed coup.

Since no one already believes Aleksander Lukashenko in the West, he needed convincing evidence that the Kremlin was preparing an armed coup in Belarus. Lukashenko needed the Wagner Group PMC for this, that is why he arrested this group of militants.

Hence the initiation of a criminal case on the preparation of a terrorist attack, where the names of a blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky and oppositionist Nikolai Statkevich are also involved, occurred.

One might think that a group of “Westernizers” within the ruling elite carried out a special operation to tear Belarus away from Russia, but the presence of Sheiman’s man and personally the chief of staff, Mikhail Orda, in the team of those who organized this suggests that the warrant of arrest of Russians was given personally by Aleksander Lukashenko and was led by Alexander Lukashenko personally.
Such a number of involved special services (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the people of Viktor Sheiman, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, etc.), as well as the places where the militants of the PMC “Wagner’s Group” were accommodated, suggests that the special operation was being prepared carefully, and the option that the Belarusian authorities did not know about PMC “Wagner’s Group” in advance and there were no agreements between Belarusians and Russians on their arrival in Belarus – is excluded.
Did the Russians really use Belarus as an intermediate country so as not to draw attention to the movements of the Wagner PMC militants and, most likely, other groups of militants? We think so. In addition, the creation of a private security company in Belarus with the right to use military weapons suggests that the Belarusian authorities / enforcers were in this scheme and were actively developing it.
Now the reaction of Russia is very interesting. In Russia, power lives by the rules and concepts of the criminal world, which has been inherited since the Soviet era. Aleksandr Lukashenko violated these “concepts” and agreements, especially criminal ones. In the criminal world, all people are divided into “People” and everyone else for criminals. For example, entrepreneurs do not belong to “People”, so the arrest of the Russian oligarch Baumgartner got away with Alexander Lukashenko and there was no harsh reaction from Russia. But the militants of the Wagner Group PMC belong to the category of “People”, which means that the demand for them will be different. Yesterday Alexander Lukashenko announced that he would hand over the militants of the Wagner Group PMC to Ukraine. For violation of criminal laws, criminal department punishes with death. But what the Kremlin means by “death” – the physical destruction of Alexander Lukashenko or the “death” (annexation) of Belarus – is not yet clear. Let’s see how events unfold.
Alexander Lukashenko achieved what he wanted (we wrote about this back in 2017). He tried to drag the West into a conflict between himself and Russia. He did it.

[1] https://www.belta.by/president/view/v-belarusi-pojavilas-chastnaja-ohrannaja-organizatsija-sotrudnikam-kotoroj-razresheno-primenjat-oruzhie-395501-2020/

[2] https://www.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-vsjakie-vojny-sejchas-nachinajutsja-s-ulichnyh-protestov-demonstratsij-399899-2020/

[3] https://myrotvorets.center/criminal/tikhanovskij-sergej-leonidovich/, https://informnapalm.org/by/russkiy-krym-siarhieja-cichanouskaha/, https://nn.by/?c=ar&i=255893

[4] https://www.belta.by/incident/view/pod-minskom-zaderzhany-32-boevika-inostrannoj-chastnoj-voennoj-kompanii-400470-2020/

[5] https://ibb.by

[6] http://belorusochka.com

[7] http://belorusochka.com/kontaktyi.html

[8] https://belprauda.org/rukovoditel-shtaba-lukashenko-poseshhal-sanatorij-belarusochka-za-den-do-zaderzhaniya-boevikov/

[9] https://telegraf.by/proisshestviya/ne-32-a-200-rossijskih-boevikov-pod-minskom-chto-stalo-izvestno-na-dannyj-moment/

[10] https://lenta.ru/news/2020/07/29/mir/

[11] https://ont.by/news/rossijskij-polittehnolog-vitalij-shklyarov-zaderzhan-v-belarusi-i-prichem-zdes-blog-strana-dlya-zhizni-rassledovanie-ont?fbclid=IwAR3dmQ0_vmLbG9E2YUIo9sjTZcVb5F4DF8w80Zd12vjvSa1Mog4be31MCfc

[12] https://www.kp.by/online/news/3960893/?fbclid=IwAR30ymI8z2LIvjzQ-UwJr7gV8M9g-uYl–OYPsJEFOhHYR9LBdP-MHux1Yg