MINSK: Belarusian protest leader Maria Kolesnikova was detained while trying to enter Ukraine in the early hours of Tuesday morning, according to Belarusian border officials, a day after her allies said she had been abducted by masked men.
The circumstances of her attempted journey to Ukraine were not immediately clear, with some media reports initially suggesting she had made it across the border, something border guards on both sides later denied.
The opposition movement on Monday had said that unidentified men had taken Kolesnikova in central Minsk and driven her off in a minivan, while two other activists disappeared later.
Those two allies successfully crossed into 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.
“She was detained in connection with the circumstances under which they (the group) left the territory of Belarus,” he said.
Travel companions
The official Belta news agency said she had been travelling with the two other activists who made it into Ukraine. Kolesnikova could not immediately be reached for comment.
Belta quoted border officials as saying the three had tried to cross the border in a BMW at about 4 am on Tuesday and said Kolesnikova’s car had accelerated sharply after being confronted by a border guard.
“Kolesnikova was outside the vehicle. In fact, she was pushed from it and it continued moving towards the Ukrainian side,” Belta quoted the border service as saying.
According to the Interfax Ukraine news agency, Kolesnikova ripped up her passport to thwart an attempt to deport her to neighbouring Ukraine.
Deputy Ukrainian Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said on Facebook that Kolesnikova, who had been missing for the past 24 hours, had successfully prevented “a forcible expulsion from her native country”.