Dhe was sentenced in absentia to two years in a camp in Russia for “discrediting” the armed forces, single father Alexey Moskalyov was probably arrested in Minsk. A first media report from Thursday night was confirmed in the morning by the lawyer Dmitry Sachvatov and later by the Belarusian Ministry of the Interior. According to the Russian prison authorities, Moskalev was released from house arrest early Tuesday morning. He was sentenced later that day.
The persecution of opponents of the Ukraine war began after Moskalyov’s daughter Marija made a drawing in art class that criticized the war. On Wednesday, the lawyer published a letter from the 13-year-old girl who, at the instigation of the authorities, has been housed in a children’s home in the city of Yefremov, a good 300 kilometers south of Moscow, since the beginning of March. In it, the girl calls her father a hero and urges him not to give up.
Lawyer Sakhvatov now told the exiled Russian broadcaster “Dozhd” that according to “indirect information” the apartment in the Belarusian capital where Moskalyov was staying was devastated and the person concerned was taken away in an unknown direction. The action was carried out by the Belarusian secret service KGB in coordination with its Russian colleagues from the FSB. The Belarusian Ministry of the Interior, on the other hand, announced that its own police had acted at the request of the Russian ones.
Zakvatov confirmed the information given from the beginning that the persecutors became aware of Moskalyov because he “didn’t pay attention to digital security”. Accordingly, he switched on his smartphone in the Minsk apartment.
The former Russian state television employee Marina Ovsyannikova had said after Moskalyov’s escape that he was “in reliable hands” and that they were looking for ways to get him to a “safe place”. Now Ovsyannikova, who herself fled Russia in the fall, wrote on Telegram that Moskalev was really arrested in Minsk. “A lot of people” were involved in his “well-organized escape”.
He was warned not to turn on his cell phone and remove the SIM card, but he did not comply. Ovsyannikova then deleted the post. The KGB and FSB are likely to be trying to get information from Moskalyov about possible helpers.