Belarus: US-Backed 'Coup' Attempt Unfolded, Says President

Two Belarusian citizens were arrested in Moscow in relation with the operation: political scientist Alexander Feduta and lawyer Yuri Zenkovich, who also has US citizenship, the President said.

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The announcement comes after the Belarusian security services, the KGB, announced on Friday evening that they had dismantled, during a "special operation", an "organised group of terrorist orientation" which was planning the "physical elimination of the president and his family" and "the organization of an armed rebellion in order to take power by violent means."

The presidential office released a video, where Lukashenko claimed that "we detained the group, they showed us how they had planned everything, I remained silent."

In Moscow the FSB arrested two men involved in the coup and published a statement on Saturday: “The opposition activists chose the day of the Victory Parade in Minsk on May 9 as the date of their military coup. The conspirators were detained by Russian security agencies and handed over to their Belarusian partners.”

Lukashenko has been in power since 1994 and won a landslide victory in the 2020 presidential election, although the opposition and Western nations claimed fraud. Immediately after his last re-election, protests organized by the opposition with wide Western support took place across the country.

As part of the new cold war making its way across the globe these days, especially against rising powers such as Russia and China and those countries within their spheres of influence, the EU, the UK and the US have resorted to coercive measures and sanctions against high-ranking Belarusian officials using the claims of the alleged election rigging and citing the subsequent repression that ensued thereof.

One of the most vocal opposition leaders, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, self-exiled in Lithuania, denounced a "provocation by the Russian and Belarusian security services, in which citizens of Belarus and the United States were dragged in".