KYIV (Reuters) - Prominent opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova was detained by Belarusian authorities, a border official said, after thwarting what a Ukrainian government minister described as an attempt to expel her from Belarus.
The fate of Kolesnikova, a key figure during four weeks of mass protests, had been a mystery since supporters said she was snatched in the street by masked men in the capital Minsk on Monday.
Deputy Ukrainian Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko told Reuters Kolesnikova had successfully prevented “a forcible expulsion from her native country”.
“Maria Kolesnikova made a courageous act that did not allow the Belarusian special services to expel her to the territory of Ukraine,” he said. “All responsibility for her life and health is on Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus.”
The Interfax Ukraine news agency said the activist had deliberately ripped up her passport so that Ukrainian border officials would not be able to let her through.
Soon after the incident, President Alexander Lukashenko told Russian reporters that he would not rule out holding new elections, but rejected any talks with opponents who he said were bent on steering the country towards disaster.
Fellow opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who is in exile in neighbouring Lithuania, called for Kolesnikova to be released, telling Reuters that her detention would only inflame the anti-government protests.
Kolesnikova’s whereabouts were unclear. Two other opposition figures who had gone missing around the same time as her, Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov, entered Ukraine in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Ukrainian border service said.
“Kolesnikova has now been detained, I can’t say concretely where she is, but she has been detained,” Anton Bychkovsky, a representative of the Belarusian border service, told Reuters by phone.
“She was detained in connection with the circumstances under which they (the group) left the territory of Belarus,” he said.
‘MAYBE I OVERSTAYED’
Lukashenko, who has crushed dissent in Belarus for the past 26 years, conceded in his interview with Russian journalists that he may have held onto power too long.
“Yes, maybe I overstayed a bit,” Russian journalist Roman Babayan cited Lukashenko as saying.
But the 66-year-old leader said he was the only person capable of protecting the country for now.
Lukashenko said his supporters would be attacked if he left power, said Babayan, editor-in-chief of the Moscow Talks radio station.
“I won’t talk to the opposition Coordination Council because I don’t know who these people are,” Lukashenko said. “They are no sort of opposition. Everything they suggest is a catastrophe for Belarus and the Belarusian people.”
Belarus has seen a tense political stalemate since a disputed presidential election on Aug. 9, with protesters flooding the streets and security forces responding with mass arrests and - according to some of those detained - beatings and torture.
The country of 9.5 million people is of key strategic interest to Moscow as a route for its oil and gas exports and a buffer between NATO and Russia.
Lukashenko denies opponents’ accusations of vote-rigging and has accused foreign powers of trying to topple him in a revolution. He retains the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a key ally, but faces the prospect of European Union sanctions later this month against Belarusian officials involved in the election and its violent aftermath.
With the detention of Kolesnikova and the arrest or flight of other opposition figures, the president has attempted to cripple the leadership of the protest movement, yet it shows no sign of abating.
Tsikhanouskaya, who stood against him in the August election, said on Tuesday that he was heading an “illegitimate regime”.
“Lukashenko does not have any legitimacy as the president of our country. He does not represent Belarus anymore,” she told a Council of Europe committee from her headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania, where she fled after the election.
Reporting by Maria Kiselyova, Vladimir Soldatkin and Alexander Marrow in Moscow and Matthias Williams and Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv and Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; writing by Mark Trevelyan and Tom Balmforth; editing by William Maclean and Philippa Fletcher
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Belarusian protest leader detained at border as Lukashenko rejects dialogue - Reuters
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