Minsk decided not to aggravate relations with Moscow and release from jail everyone, who was arrested on the night after the presidential election, early – before the New Year’s Day and expiration of their sentence. The Consular Office has already purchased them a train ticket to Moscow and they will return home on December 30. Refusal to release the Russians would have sparked some serious tensions in the relations between the two states, say experts.
Belarusian authorities have released all the Russians remaining under arrest in Minsk’s detention centers after being arrested following an opposition protest on the night of the December 19 presidential elections. They were all supposed to celebrate the New Year’s Eve in jail, as they were due to be released in January, 2011.
“All Russian citizens, arrested on December 19 in Minsk, have been released regardless of the term of their sentence,” representatives of the Belarusian Interior Ministry’s Citizenship and Migration Department told Interfax-West on Wednesday. As was explained by the Department, “For now, the deportation procedures will not be applied to the Russian citizens in question. We will work with each person individually."
By the evening of December 29, nine Russian citizens remained under arrest in the Belarusian detention centers – they all were sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest by the Minsk’s courts. Earlier today, two Russians were released after serving their 10-day sentence.
One of the activists of Solidarity’s Moscow Division, Anastasia Rybachenko, who had been sentenced to 15 days in jail, told Gazeta.Ru that instead of serving the remaining five days she will be forced to pay a fine – the size of which Rybachenko does not know. She did not go to court, where her sentence was supposed to be changed.
“At that time, I was in the detention center of the Minsk District Office of the Ministry of Interior,” said Rybachenko. “When the people, who served their 10-day term, were being released, I, just like they, was told to hand in my sheets. Then they announced that we were being released without any explanations.”
At the detention center, she was met by representatives of Russia’s Consular Office.
“They bought me a train ticket to Moscow. I’m leaving tonight,” said Rybachenko.
She has not yet met other Russians who had been released.
While serving time at the detention center, the young woman had caught a cold and even went on a hunger strike to protest the poor incarceration conditions, but after being moved to a different cell and meeting with a representative of the Russian Consular Office, she started eating.
Information about the release is being confirmed by the Russian Ministry of Interior. The Ministry’s official statement reads that “as a result of the efforts made, we were able to ensure an early release for the nine Russian citizens who were held under administrative arrest in Minsk’s detention facilities on charges of taking part in an illegal mass protest on December 19.”
The diplomats are referring to the continuous official appeals made by the Ministry of Interior to their Belarusian colleagues, first, with a request to allow staff members of the Russian Consular Office in Belarus to have access to the arrested individuals, and then – asking for an early release to be granted to the Russians, as well as a phone call, made by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Grigory Karasin, to the Belarusian ambassador in Russia.
This did not prevent the Belarusian court from refusing on Monday to free all the Russians, who filed a request for an early release.
Today, more than 400 people remain under arrest in the Belarusian detention centers since the presidential elections, including five former presidential candidates and two dozen well-known members of the opposition. Twenty-six Belarusians were accused in organizing mass disturbances, the maximum sentence for which is 15 years.
This was a political decision, says Belarusian political analyst Yury Shevtsov: an early release of Russians means that the Belarusian authorities decided not to intensify the conflict with the Kremlin – the two countries’ relations have just normalized prior to the elections, after President Aleksandr Lukashenko and Dmitry Medvedev’s meeting at the CIS Summit in Moscow. “Russians were, apparently, tested by being accused (in organizing disturbances), and there was no evidence against them,” says the analyst. “If they had not been released, there would have been some nervousness about the fact that such heavy charges could have been brought against the Russians, which could have, in turn, resulted in a political conflict between Belarus and Russia, because the individuals accused in organizing disturbances could have been regarded as a weapon in the hands of the people, protected by the government, who have made an attempt to organize a coup in Belarus. This would have been a very dangerous situation in the bilateral relations.” But now, says the expert, following the detainees’ release, there is no longer a reason to advance the conflict.
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