ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – President Vladimir V. Putin insisted on Friday that Russia wants to be “neutral” on the events in Belarus in order to distance his country from the uproar over the forced diversion of a passenger plane with a Belarusian dissident on board.
Putin’s comments at Russia’s premier economic conference in St. Petersburg came the day after arrested dissident Roman Protasevich appeared on Belarusian state television with bruises on his wrists. Mr Protasevich confessed to organizing anti-government protests – an interview his family, supporters and Western officials said were conducted under duress.
“Belarus has many problems, domestic ones, and we really want to take a neutral position,” said Putin.
Putin’s reluctance to support Belarusian leader Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Russia’s closest ally, showed the pressure on Lukashenko’s crackdown and arrest of Mr Protasevich. While Putin fears that Lukashenko’s fall could be a geopolitical loss for Russia, the unpredictable and brutal repression of the Belarusian leader is also becoming a problem for the Kremlin.
On Friday, Western officials condemned the interview with Mr Protasevich, and the European Union continued the previously planned sanctions prohibiting Belarusian airlines from flying over EU territory. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz attended the St. Petersburg conference by video link with Putin and called the “forced confession” by Protasevich something that “we do not consider to be acceptable in any way”.
For Putin, Belarus is an important ally, perhaps the last post-Soviet country in Europe to steadfastly cling to Moscow. When hundreds of thousands of Belarusians rose against Lukashenko last summer, Putin’s support was crucial in keeping him in power.
But Putin also has a strained relationship with Lukashenko, and he seems keen to prevent the excitement over the diversion from disrupting his summit with President Biden, due to take place on June 16.
When asked if he believed Mr Lukashenko’s allegation that the Ryanair plane that Mr Protasevich flew in was crashed because of a bomb threat, Mr Putin replied: “I do not want to evaluate what happened to that plane. To be honest, I don’t know. “
He also denied that Russia knew in advance of the operation by Belarus to crash the commercial flight carrying Mr Protasevich between the capitals of two EU countries, Greece and Lithuania.
Understand the situation in Belarus
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- Belarus in the spotlight. The emergency landing of an airliner on Sunday is seen by several countries as a state hijacking demanded by their strong President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko.
- Election results and protest. It came less than a year after Belarusians faced police violence in protesting the results of an election that many Western governments mocked as sham.
- Forced plane landing. The Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, was diverted to Minsk to arrest 26-year-old journalist Roman Protasevich.
- Who is Roman Protasevich? In a video released by the government, Mr. Protasevich confessed to participating in organizing “mass riots” last year, but friends say the confession was made under duress.
Despite his lukewarm comments, Putin showed no sign of withdrawing support for Lukashenko, who claims the protests against him have been manipulated by the West. Based on the topics of conversation on Russian state television, Mr Putin compared the protests in Belarus to the siege of the Capitol in Washington on January 6 and criticized the West for condemning the violence of the riot police in Belarus but not the arrests of the Capitol rioters in Belarus The United States.
“Everything is up to the people of Belarus,” said Putin. “Over there it’s all assessed in one light and tone, and then the same thing happens in the States, but everything is assessed differently.”
To underscore the continued support of Russia, the head of the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR met on Thursday with his counterpart in Belarus, who heads an espionage agency called KGB West, ”reported the official Belarusian news agency.
Mr Protasevich, the 26-year-old dissident journalist, is the former editor of NEXTA, an opposition account on the Telegram social network. Just last month he called Lukashenko a “dictator” and compared him to Hitler.
On May 23, Lukashenko climbed into a fighter jet to intercept the Ryanair flight – a move condemned by the international community and leaders across Europe – and after landing in Minsk, security forces kidnapped Mr Protasevich and his girlfriend. He is being held in a KGB prison, said his father and lawyer.
In the interview broadcast on Thursday evening, conducted by the head of a Belarusian state television broadcaster, a tearful Mr. Protasevich appeared worried and exhausted. He said that he “undoubtedly” respected Mr. Lukashenko before complimenting him.
European leaders condemned Mr Protasevich’s interview. A spokesperson for Chancellor Angela Merkel called the confession “totally unworthy and untrustworthy,” and British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Twitter that “those involved in the filming, coercion and conducting the interview must be held accountable “.
On Friday, as expected, the European Union officially implemented some of the sanctions its leaders agreed last week. It banned all Belarusian airlines from flying over the block’s airspace and landing at airports on its territory. Individual European countries had already taken similar measures.
“The EU member states will therefore be obliged to refuse aircraft operated by Belarusian airlines to land, take off or fly over their territory,” the EU Council said in a statement.
Mr Protasevich said in the interview that he organized unauthorized mass rallies, a charge punishable by up to three years in prison. He said he chose to do the interview voluntarily and that he was not put on any makeup to hide the traces of torture.
His blatant admission, which some observers likened to Stalin’s show trials in the 1930s, described the Belarusian opposition as worms who lead luxurious lifestyles on those countries’ payrolls in Lithuania and Poland. He also referred to his opposition colleagues as accomplices in his crimes and gave specific names.
Mr Protasevich’s turnaround is not unusual in Mr Lukashenko’s Belarus. Several opposition and media representatives have made similar abrupt turns in their public statements after spending time in Belarusian prisons. Yuri Voskresensky, a former political prisoner, described his own imprisonment as “hell”.
Speaking to TV Rain, an independent Russian television station, Mr Protasevich’s father, Dmitri Protasevich, called the interview “a propaganda video”.
“It is very difficult for him to say these things and I am sure that he was compelled and intimidated,” he said. “He’s been under pressure for more than a week.”
Dmitri Protasevich said Belarusian law enforcement agencies could also put pressure on his son through his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, who is also from the KGB. is being held
“She could be held in the cell next to him,” he said.
Conditions in such prisons are bleak, say former inmates. The Russian citizen Yegor Dudnikov was arrested by Belarusian law enforcement agencies in early May and has been in a KGB prison since then. In a letter to his lawyer, he described that he had been beaten and tortured to force a confession.
Mr Dudnikov, who said he was a technical specialist who helped opposition activists with videos, described being forced to make a statement to the state television station interviewing Mr Protasevich.
“On May 25, they took me to a room where they gave me answers that had already been prepared by the television crew,” he said in a letter to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “They gave me time to memorize them – on May 28th, television people came and made the recording.”
But Mr Putin, speaking at a personal international conference that brought together thousands of delegates despite the ongoing pandemic, said he cared little about Mr Protasevich’s plight.
“I do not know this novel Protasevich and I do not want to know him,” said Putin.
And Belarus was not on the list of topics, Putin said he plans to discuss with Mr Biden when the two meet in Geneva this month. Those issues, Putin said, would include strategic stability and arms control, international conflict, counterterrorism, the pandemic and the environment. Putin said Moscow and Washington needed to improve their relations from today’s “extremely low levels” but maintained his often-voiced view that the United States was solely responsible for the tensions.
“We have no disagreements with the United States,” Putin said. “They only have one difference of opinion: they want to stop our development, they talk about it publicly. Everything else flows out of this position. “
Anton Troianovski reported from St. Petersburg and Ivan Nechepurenko from Moscow. Monika Pronczuk contributed the reporting from Brussels.
