Briefly

• So far, it is not known for certain who was killed in Hrodna, what country he was a citizen of.

• The first version, which was expressed by pro-government information sources, was about the Polish trail, about the fact that Poland had resorted to terrorist activities.

• The first version, which was immediately expressed by many independent media: the events in Hrodna were staged, a performance.

There is still no clarity about what happened in Hrodna.

After the first reports about the incident, only the fact itself and the fact that the killed "terrorist" was a foreign citizen were discussed.

Today, Alexander Lukashenko told a little more at the meeting with the security forces, but also rather uncertainly.

"The highest level of external threats to Belarus forces us to pay close attention to internal threats as well... The other day, a foreign terrorist abandoned to us was neutralized in Hrodna... The fact that they confiscated an entire arsenal of weapons and explosives, which were intended for high-profile terrorist attacks in relations with citizens and officials... They are all documented, his wishes and plans."

Later, the state media published the clarifications of the special services: "In February, the KGB received information about the intentions of escaped extremists to transport one of their supporters from Poland to Belarus.

A person with a Russian passport - Aleksey Mikolaevich Lamakin, born in 1981, came into the KGB's field of vision.

Later it will be found out that the documents are forged."

The Russian passport is, say, forged.

And what is the real, what is the real citizenship of the murdered?

It has not yet been reported, but there are interesting interpretations that appeared sooner or later in official and semi-official sources.

For example, the pro-government political scientist Alyaksei Dzerman, without waiting for official explanations, wrote to himself in TG:

"Troubling news from Hrodna.

An armed foreigner who was preparing a terrorist attack was eliminated.

His citizenship is still unknown, but we understand which neighboring country is nearby and what its intentions are.

An analogy can be drawn from the 20s and mid-30s of the 20th century, when Pilsudski's regime was one of the main threats to the Soviet Union in the West."

Yes, the citizenship of the foreigner is still unknown, but the shadow of Pilsudzky is already visible behind him.

The Polish theme is also present in today's official message of the special services, but in an overtone, in the background.

According to this version, the organizers are "fugitive extremists" from Poland, but not the Polish state.

And Lukashenka, recalling the events in Hrodna at the meeting, vaguely hinted at the connection between external and internal threats.

Commenting on the sabotage in Machulyshchy, he directly accused the Ukrainian special services and the Ukrainian authorities.

Today, there were no such invectives directed at the Polish authorities.

What actually happened in Hrodna?

The version that was immediately voiced by some non-state media is a staging, a performance, a production.

There was no terrorist, no one was killed, or a completely innocent person was killed.

Against the background of the "most gestural purge" announced by Lukashenka after the sabotage in Machulyshche, this could not have happened in the official impulse.

But still, another version seems more likely.

Too many non-theatrical details have already been made public.

Well, there is a certain experience, there is a specific precedent.

When Yuras Zyankovich and Aleksandar Fyaduta were arrested in Moscow for their participation in the conspiracy, the first reaction was: what a delusion, what a conspiracy, some complete nonsense.

And it turned out that it is not solid.

People are different.

The wave of repression in Belarus is not abating.

And people, Belarusians with foreign and Belarusian passports, react to it in different ways.

And someone comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to act decisively and immediately.

Why, theoretically speaking, such a person or such people could not start to act?

For some, Sakhashchyk and ByPol ​​with his "Victory" plan are too radical, and for some, they are not decisive enough.

I repeat - people are different.

But the case of Zyankovych - Fyaduta - Kastusev suggests the possibility of an additional plot line.

As it turned out, the entire conspiracy was a provocation of the Belarusian special services almost from the beginning, they monitored every step of the conspirators.

Was it the same in Hrodna?

Staging, but in a slightly different sense, a performance in which the main performer does not know whose script and who is the director.

In 1906, a young Socialist-Revolutionary Ivan Pulikhov threw a bomb at the governor of Minsk, Pavel Kurlov.

The bomb did not explode, Pulikhov was hanged.

Many years later, the head of the Pieterse security guard at that time, Vasyl Gerasimov, described the details of the attempt on Kurlov.

A terrorist also brought the bomb to Pulikhava from Peter.

But on a part-time basis, she is an agent of Colonel Gerasimov.

The bomb had a tiny defect.

He fired this bomb and could not kill Kurlov.

The bomb could not explode.

Everything was captured, everything was under control.

Some ruckus last weekend around the house of the head of the Horadze administration, Vladimir Karanik, in combination with the murder of a "terrorist", does not rule out that they were going to completely repeat Gerasimov's scheme with the "assassination on Kurlov".

But perhaps they decided not to complicate things and simply kill the modern Pulikhov.

What did the special officials-organizers of the urban scenario win?

After the cancellation of the version about the "Polish track" (if it is canceled), by and large, nothing special.

The "cruelest purge" was announced already after the incident in Machulyshche.

The "cruelest in the square" will not cause a murder in Hrodna.

In particular, there is nowhere else to "move".

The propaganda effect is also quite modest.

Everyone is alive and well (except the "terrorist", of course).

Opponents of the government have been called terrorists for a long time.

So the propaganda bomb from the city incident failed.

It is possible that this story for the special services is a kind of justification for Machulyshchy, a replacement for the impression of the failure in Machulyshchy.

They didn't prevent it there, but they did prevent it in Hrodna.

Perhaps new details of the murder and its context will suggest a different version, but for now this one looks at least quite plausible.

• Yuri Drakakhrust

  Radio Svaboda journalist

  
  

  drakakhrusty@rferl.org

  FACEBOOKSubscribe