The instigators of the coup d’etat in Belarus are preparing the liquidation of a prominent priest of the Roman Catholic Church in order to provoke an increase in anti-government sentiment in the republic.
This was announced by the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin.
He stressed that the authors of the idea are in the United States. They want to confront the representatives of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in order to force Minsk to take action against the RCC.
“According to the available data, among the extremist opponents of the current Belarusian authorities who are now hiding abroad, a plan is being hatched for a resonant provocation, during which one of the authoritative clerics of the RCC would be arrested or even wounded or killed,” Naryshkin specified. “The expectation is that this will significantly increase anti-government sentiment among Catholics and spur them on to more active participation in street protests.”
On August 9, presidential elections were held in Belarus, following which Alexander Lukashenko won. Western countries, for which the Belarusian leader had been a hindrance for a long time, did not put up with the voting results. As a result, pre-planned riots broke out in Belarus.
Attempts by law enforcement officers to keep the situation under control turned into clashes with radicals. At the same time, the Western media, actively covering the protests, focus specifically on the actions of the security forces against the “peaceful” protesters, as it was during the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014.
The headquarters of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the leader of the pro-Western opposition, is preparing for lengthy protests aimed at overthrowing the government. A committee for the “transit of power” has already been formed there. Tihanovskaya herself is hiding in Lithuania. Lukashenka, in turn, does not rule out that he will resign, but only after the referendum on amendments to the constitution.
The position of the European Union regarding what is happening is ambiguous. Poland and Lithuania are actively working on the revolutionary scenario. They are also promoting more radical measures of pressure on official Minsk in the EU. Western European countries are taking a more cautious approach. They are afraid to provoke a new round of confrontation with Russia. The expert community believes that this is a deliberately losing option for the EU.