Translated material
On guard of allied air defense
Polish spies are being tried in Belarus
Today, the military collegium of the Supreme Court of Belarus will begin considering the case of Polish spies . “Four individuals will appear before the court, each of whom is charged with collecting and transmitting information to a foreign state on the instructions of foreign intelligence,” the Supreme Court said in an official statement. At the same time, “in the interests of ensuring the protection of state secrets, the trial of the case will take place in a closed court session.” Four Belarusian officers face imprisonment for a term of seven to 15 years.Representatives of the Belarusian KGB spoke about the disclosure of the Polish spy network in mid-July on state television. They reported that four Belarusian and one Russian officer collected information about the air defense system of the Russian-Belarusian union state for Polish intelligence and were detained red-handed at the beginning of the year. Vladimir Russkin, an air force and air defense officer who headed the spy network, was allegedly recruited by Polish intelligence services while trying to smuggle alcohol across the border in quantities exceeding the permitted limit. The TV report said that secret information was copied onto a flash drive, which was supposed to be hidden in a hiding place equipped in a car fire extinguisher.
The day after the story about Polish spies was published, President Alexander Lukashenko replaced the leadership of the KGB, dismissing the head of the special service Stepan Sukhorenko. Introducing the new chief Yuri Zhadobin to the KGB employees, the president called the case of Polish spies a “bright glimmer” in the work of the intelligence service, noting that the disclosure of the spy network “shows that among the operational staff of the State Security Committee there are reliable, decent, honest people.”
“The espionage case was made public when clouds gathered over the former KGB leadership. It was supposed to demonstrate the power of the special service,” the leader of the Belarusian United Civil Party, Anatoly Lebedko, told Vremya Novostey. Independent political scientist Alexander Klaskovsky, in a conversation with VN, said that the scandalous case “continues somewhat by inertia. Today, Minsk is not interested in complicating relations with the West and Russia, so it is unlikely that it will seek to give the spy scandal additional resonance.”