DISINFO: Polish, Ukrainian spy agencies use mentally unstable Belarusians for terrorist attacks
SUMMARY
Polish and Ukrainian secret services were searching for mentality unstable people and luring them into destructive sects in order to prepare them for different forms of anti-state terror.
RESPONSE
Disinformation about Belarus and secret services.
This is an unsubstantiated claim. There is no evidence that Polish or Ukrainian secret services employ mentally unstable people in Belarus for terrorist attacks against the state.
This message was circulated in the wake of a raid by Belarusian security forces on a flat in Minsk on 28 September 2021, where Andrei Zeltser, an employee of the US-based software firm Epam Systems, was killed. Belarusian authorities claim that he was a terrorist whom law enforcers came to arrest, but he shot and killed a plainclothesman and was shot dead himself. Zeltser was known as an active participant in last year’s protests against rigged presidential elections in Belarus. However, there is no independent evidence that he was a terrorist, nor that he was trained by foreign secret services for that purpose.
See related examples of disinformation claims alleging that US and European allies stage provocations against Belarus, plot to kill Lukashenka; Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine are involved in the establishment of sleeper cells in Belarus; Western secret services leaked information about Pratasevich’s journey to Minsk.