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[Korrepondent] The KGB of Belarus said that the detained founder of the opposition portal Nexta Roman Protasevich took part in the hostilities in the Donbass as part of the Azov battalion. The founder of the volunteer unit of the National Guard, Andrei Biletsky, confirmed that Protasevich "was with Azov," but did not fight.
"Terrorist journalist"
On May 26, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, for whose arrest a Ryanair plane was forcibly landed , together with his accomplices, was going to "arrange a massacre and bloody mutiny" in the country.
"Now let his numerous Western defenders answer the question: what special services did this person work for? Not only him, but also his accomplice. Western defenders must answer the question: who paid him for participation in the war in Donbass? This is probably what they are afraid of Most of all. Therefore, they raised a howl. He has a great experience as a mercenary. These facts are known not only in our country and in fraternal Russia, but throughout the world, "he said.
Lukashenko noted that Protasevich was a mercenary and "a bastard who killed people in the south-east of Ukraine."
Later, the head of the KGB of Belarus Ivan Tertel said that Protasevich fought in the Azov regiment.
"It is indisputable that this person fully complies with the definition of a terrorist, a mercenary fighter, a participant in the bloody events in the infamous Azov battalion associated with the atrocities and deaths of civilians in southeastern Ukraine," he said.
Tertel noted that the data on this "presented in the media with personal confessions of Protasevich, which are widely available." According to the chief Belarusian security officer, the detainee "actively used" in Belarus the wholesale obtained in the Donbass.
On the eve of the first commander of the volunteer regiment, the leader of the Ukrainian party National Corps Andriy Biletsky, announced the attitude of Protasevich to Azov.
"I'll dot all the Is right away. Yes, Roman really, together with Azov and other military units, fought against the occupation of Ukraine. He was with us in Shirokino, where he was wounded. But his weapon as a journalist was not a machine gun, but a word," wrote Biletsky in Telegram on May 25.
Azov fought in the Mariupol area. The unit drove the militants out of there on June 13, 2014, and then defended the approaches to it after the Ilovaisk tragedy. In the fall of 2014, the battalion became part of the National Guard as a separate special forces detachment and has since remained part of the regular formations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
Russia and its allies blame Azov for war crimes in eastern Ukraine, and many of his fighters are called neo-Nazis. The Russian authorities have banned the activities of Azov and the National Corps, and those suspected of participating in hostilities in the Donbas as part of a battalion are sentenced to real prison terms.
The Belarusian media have repeatedly reported about Protasevich's involvement in the Azov battalion in 2014-2015, when he was 18-19 years old.
"Protasevich is, to put it mildly, an interesting character. At first he gained some experience during the Ukrainian revolution, even participated in the ATO zone. Last summer and autumn, he introduced all this experience on the Belarusian information front," local television said on 23 May.
The co-founder of Nexta himself said that he came to the Maidan and was even seriously injured during another confrontation with the security forces.
Then, according to him, he met the future commanders of Azov. In the combat zone, he said, together with the battalion, he worked exclusively as a war correspondent, and rejected claims of participation in hostilities.
In recent days, several fakes have appeared about Protasevich's participation in the hostilities in the Donbass.
For example, the pro-Russian blogger Anatoly Shariy published the cover of the Black Sun magazine with a photograph of a guy in the uniform of an Azov battalion with a machine gun, claiming with reference to "separate face matching programs" that this is evidence against Protasevich.
| However, the publication Insider writes that Shariy passed off another person for Protasevich - the Azov fighter Andrei Snitko, who died in August 2014 in the battles for Ilovaisk. In 2016, Snitko was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. |
The publication in its publication refers to the representatives of the battalion, as well as to the photographs of Andrey Snitko: they really resemble the image of the man on the aforementioned cover of the Black Sun.
Also in social networks, a clipping from the video of the TV channel Nowadays is distributed with the alleged father of Protasevich Dmitry. Of all the material, only one phrase was left: "criminal cases were opened against my son even when in 2014 he was in the territory of Donbass and fought on the side of the Ukrainian army."
However, the person in the frame visually and in voice does not look like Dmitry Protasevich, who recently gave several interviews. There is no indication of the time and circumstances of the shooting, and there is no link to the report from which this phrase was cut.
Zmitser Protasevich himself said in an interview with ERB that he knows nothing about his son's connections with the armed formations. Even if Roman Protasevich was in Donbass, the detainee's father notes, it was only as a freelance journalist.
The father of the Nexta co-founder is sure that in this way they are trying to denigrate him, putting an equal sign between a journalist and a terrorist.
The military journalist of the Russian edition of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alexander Kots, who supports the separatists in Donbass, published several photos on his Telegram with an Azov fighter who looks like Protasevich.
He also cited an interview with a Belarusian volunteer under the call sign Kim, who, according to indirect data, can be mistaken for Protasevich.
On May 5, Roman Protasevich turned 26 years old. His Twitter profile reads "The first ever terrorist journalist." Protasevich is the first citizen in the history of Belarus, included in the official list of persons who may be involved in terrorist activities.
Roman Protasevich took part in protests against Lukashenko since the early 2010s - he was still a schoolboy. For the very first action he was expelled from the lyceum at the National Technical University, and he returned to a regular school.
He entered the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University, but he was also expelled from there.
Protasevich started working as a freelancer for several independent media outlets. In parallel, he wrote news for the Telegram channel, which he and another recent schoolboy Stepan Putilo created.
The Telegram channel was called Nexta (Nekhta - from the Belarusian "someone"), and at first it was a by-product, the main one was the channel of the same name on YouTube, and the teenagers planned to upload their music there.
In the spring of 2020, as the protest moods in Belarus grew, the channel began to enjoy more and more popularity. And in August, after the presidential elections, the number of Nexta readers in a few days increased from 300 thousand to 1.8 million people.
In terms of popularity, Nexta was second only to TUT.by, the country's main independent media outlet, which was read by 62 percent of Belarusians.
The channel actively covers protests against Lukashenko, for which the Belarusian authorities recognized him as extremist. Shortly before that, Protasevich announced his withdrawal from the project, began to conduct the Telegram-channel Belarus of the brain, which is also recognized as extremist in the Republic of Belarus.
In November 2020, the Investigative Committee of Belarus opened several criminal cases against Protasevich. He is accused of mass riots, organizing and preparing actions that grossly violate public order, as well as inciting racial, national, religious or other social hostility or discord.
On May 4, Lukashenko, by his decree, deprived the rank of lieutenant colonel of Roman's father, Dmitry Protasevich, who had served in the army for almost 30 years.
It appears that the Belarusian authorities beef against Roman Protasevich dates back almost seven years:
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