Spokesperson for Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Oleh Nikolenko says claims made by Chairman of the State Security Committee (KGB) of Belarus Ivan Tertel about large-scale arms trafficking from Ukraine to Belarus for allegedly committing "terrorist attacks" are complete nonsense.
"[This is] complete nonsense, which is voiced by Belarusian officials not for the first time. We categorically deny the repeated allegation about 'weapons from Ukraine,'" he said on Twitter on March 10.
"The authorities in Belarus should finally stop scaring the Belarusian people with an imaginary external enemy," he added.
After riots in Belarus last autumn, that country's President Alexander Lukashenko accused Ukraine of meddling and "managing protests." Further, Belarusian officials have repeatedly made unfriendly statements about Ukraine.
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Belarusian KGB and "arms from Ukraine"
- On March 9, Belarusian KGB chief Tertel said on TV channel Belarus 1 that huge batches of weapons had been shipped from Ukraine to Belarus, allegedly for "acts of terror."
- He claimed that "the huge consignments of weapons were delivered from Ukrainian territory to Belarus for further use to destabilize the situation." He alleged that "terrorist acts had been planned both against government agencies' facilities and individual officials, including jeopardizing a large share of the population."
- Tertel also mentioned groups he dubbed as "terrorist" ones. "These are groups known as Olinevych's squads – anarchists who lived in Poland and Ukraine, where they were provided with weapons, special gear, and then [they] entered our territory, committed acts of terror, and tried to enter Ukraine. This is also a group of a well-known terrorist, Avtukhovych. An investigation vis-à-vis his group is underway now," he said.
- According to Tertel, "requests mentioning facts, surnames, phone numbers of the persons involved have been sent to the Ukrainian side through the Prosecutor General's Office," but Minsk has not received any response yet.
