Who is Belarus opposition figure Roman Protasevich, who was onboard the flight that the Belarus government “hijacked,” that was en route from Athens to Vilnius? According to a report in RT in 2017, Protasevich received a journalist grant from a Czech non-governmental organization, and in the same year also worked for the U.S. state broadcaster Radio Liberty. In April 2018, Protasevich made a trip to Washington, where he claims he visited the U.S. State Department for meetings. He then worked at the USAID-funded Euroradio until the end of 2019. In December 2019, Protasevich emigrated to Poland, where he applied for political asylum. In Poland, he became involved in the NEXTA project. RT reports that NEXTA organizes and orchestrates protests in Belarus and Russia with the support of Western regime-change experts. And NEXTA has just started hiring people on the internet for a program to train Belarusian volunteers to conduct activities for a coup in the country. It also publishes personal details of Belarus security officials, leaving them open to attacks.
Protasevich worked with NEXTA from February 2020 until he separated from its founder Stepan Putilo at the end of September. He then moved to Lithuania, where he cooperated with the staff of the ex-presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
As early as 2011-2012, Protasevich coordinated protest groups on social media, such as “We’re sick of Lukashenko.” In 2011, he joined a Belarusian nationalist organization “Young Front,” in which he became a leading official. By the end of 2013, he was in Kiev, where he took part in the Maidan protests and the destruction of the Lenin monument in Kiev on Dec. 8. By 2014 he was in Eastern Ukraine as a “freelancer,” making video recordings and reporting from the “front.” Other sources claim he received brief combat training from the right-wing extremist Azov Battalion, and worked in its press service. According to the portal FOIA Research, Protasevich was a sympathizer of a far-right Belarusian unit Pahonia Detachment, which sent fighters to Eastern Ukraine, and took part in protests by the “Black Block” group in Belarus in early 2017.
So, while it might be a bit of a stretch, we will assert that Protasevich is an obvious Western intelligence operative acting against the Belarus government from his own statements and actions. This offers, if not more, at least the same justification for the Belaus authorities to act as the Obama White House had done in 2013, when it forced the landing of Bolivian President Evo Morales’ aircraft, attempting to arrest Edward Snowden, whom it believed was on the plane. was on it. Snowden wasn’t onboard, but President Morales was!
Commenting on the Europeans’ and the U.S. hypocrisy and their claims to be shocked by the Belarus government’s actions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Facebook page: “It is shocking that the West describes the incident in Belarus’ airspace as’ shocking ‘...Either everything has to shock: From the forced landing of the Bolivian President’s plane in Austria at the request of the USA to the landing of the Belarusian plane with anti-Maidan activists on board 11 minutes after take-off in Ukraine. Or you shouldn’t be shocked by similar behavior by others. The use of information and political campaigns to shape media perception no longer has the desired effect — the Internet remembers all the cases of violent abductions, forced landings and illegal arrests made by the `keepers of order and the guardians of morality’ that were carried out.”
