Роман Протасевич. Фото: t.me/sprava_by
Alyaksandr Lukashenka has described Raman Pratasevich as an officer of Belarusian intelligence. He did not specify how long Pratasevich had worked for the intelligence service.
“I won’t go into details. Pratasevich is an officer of our intelligence. Did we need to detain him? The question is, why were they flying to Vilnius, didn’t land there, and instead turned around and came to Minsk, landing after a call that there was supposedly some explosive on board… Well, land then — you were flying to Vilnius, you were over Vilnius — land there. But they turned around and came to Minsk. They landed in Minsk. I said: ‘So, carry out the operation — he was working under cover among those fugitives. Conduct the operation properly.’
We had to carry out the operation to detain him, although we didn’t need to detain him. He went to Greece — he had been summoned there — reported to our intelligence officers everything that interested us, received an assignment, and was flying back, to where he was working, via Vilnius. They accused us of detaining an opposition figure. But he’s not our opposition figure. We didn’t detain an opposition activist. And then they imposed sanctions,” Lukashenka said.
Raman Pratasevich is a journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Telegram channel Nexta. He was detained in May 2021 after the forced landing of a Ryanair flight traveling from Athens to Vilnius. Sofia Sapega was detained along with him. In May 2023, Pratasevich was sentenced to eight years in prison and pardoned later that month. In 2024, a court annulled a large fine imposed on him.