MOSCOW — Maria Kolesnikova, the ultimate excellent protest chief in Belarus nonetheless at huge, vanished on Monday and native data media retailers reported that she had been grabbed off the highway by masked kidnappers inside the center of the East European nation’s capital, bundled proper right into a darkish minivan and pushed away at velocity.
The kidnapping of Ms. Kolesnikova, the most recent in a group of disappearances apparently engineered by Belarus’s security companies, adopted large protests on Sunday in Minsk, the capital, and towns across the country. It appeared to duplicate a shift in approach from the preliminary frenzy of police violence in opposition to protesters to selecting off opposition leaders one after the opposite and sending them abroad.
Linas Linkevicius, the abroad minister of neighboring Lithuania, talked about Ms. Kolesnikova had been the sufferer of a “kidnapping,” deploring in a Twitter post that “Stalinist N.Okay.V.D. methods are being utilized in 21st century Europe.”
The N.Okay.V.D. was the precursor of the Okay.G.B., a popularity nonetheless proudly embraced by the precept security firm in Belarus, a former Soviet republic that has often been described as “Europe’s ultimate dictatorship.”
At a data conference on Monday in Warsaw, the capital of neighboring Poland, exiled members of a coordination council organize ultimate month in Minsk by opponents of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko talked about that Ms. Kolesnikova, a member of the council’s presidium, had disappeared with out a touch off the highway in Minsk inside the morning.
Olga Kovalkova, a member of the council who was herself arrested two weeks previously in Minsk after which pressured to go away Belarus for Poland over the weekend, talked about that Ms Kolesnikova had been “kidnapped in central Minsk” by “unknown of us.”
“Her whereabouts are unknown,” Mrs. Kovalkova added.
Tut, a Belarusian data web site sympathetic to the opposition, quoted a witness to Ms. Kolesnikova’s abduction as saying that the opposition chief had been strolling near the Nationwide Paintings Museum in Minsk when she was confronted by masked of us in civilian clothes and pushed proper right into a prepared van marked with the phrase “Communication.”
Ms. Kolesnikova first gained prominence as an election advertising and marketing marketing campaign supervisor for Viktor Babariko, a excellent Belarusian banker who had consider to run in opposition to Mr. Lukashenko in August. Sooner than he would possibly downside the president, nonetheless, he was arrested on what had been broadly seen as trumped up financial prices. He is nonetheless in jail.
After failing ultimate month to tamp down widespread anger over the Aug. 9 election, by which the president claimed an implausible landslide victory, Mr. Lukashenko’s security tools seems to have adopted a subtler tactic of centered assaults on protest leaders.
Mr. Linkevicius accused Mr. Lukashenko, whom he described as Belarus’s “outgoing administration,” of making an attempt to “take away” his most outspoken foes “one after the opposite.”
Ms. Kolesnikova’s disappearance removes the ultimate member nonetheless energetic inside Belarus of a trio of female activists behind a groundswell of opposition to Mr. Lukashenko. The alternative two, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Mr. Lukashenko’s main challenger in the disputed election, and Veronika Tsepkalo, the partner of a would-be candidate who fled sooner than polling day, every left Belarus to stay away from arrest rapidly after Mr. Lukashenko claimed re-election.
As an alternative of merely throwing his most excellent opponents in jail, which could hazard inflaming public anger, Mr. Lukashenko has started pressuring them to flee to each Lithuania or Poland, every members of NATO, after which casting them as traitors working with Western powers to undermine every Belarus and Russia.
Mr. Lukashenko, who has dominated Belarus since 1994, has repeatedly supplied weeks of unrest as a NATO plot and used this to rally help for his authorities from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, When the protests started nearly a month previously, Mr. Putin supplied solely lukewarm backing nonetheless, complaining of Western meddling, he launched late ultimate month that he had formed a reserve stress of Russian security officers ready for movement in Belarus if “the state of affairs will get uncontrolled.”
By stripping the opposition of its administration, Mr. Lukashenko apparently hopes to frequently stall the protests’ momentum, allowing his security forces to frighten those who proceed protesting with the specter of mass arrests. The Inside Ministry talked about on Monday that virtually 700 protesters had been arrested on Sunday.
On Saturday, Ms. Kovalkova, an ally of Ms. Tikhanovskaya, turned the most recent opponent of Mr. Lukashenko to be pressured to go away Belarus. Arrested two weeks previously in Minsk, she abruptly reappeared in Poland. She instructed the knowledge conference in Warsaw that Okay.G.B. officers in Minsk had supplied a stark choice: each maintain in jail indefinitely or go away the nation.
She talked about Belarusian security officers put her head in a hood, bundled her proper right into a car that drove all through the nation after which dumped her on the border with Poland. The Belarusian Inside Ministry instructed a Russian data firm that she had been launched for medical causes.
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting
