Former political prisoner Mikalai Dziadok said that two provocateurs came to a meeting with Belarusians in Kraków. One of them was a Belarusian from Barysau born in 2003, the other was a Ukrainian.
According to Dziadok, the young men arrived an hour and a half late and then began asking questions about his personal life, while behaving uncertainly.
“At the meeting in Kraków, when we were already starting to disperse (the meeting was held in a park), two young men approached us with dissatisfied expressions. Both were breathing heavily and were visibly tense.
No one among the Belarusians in Kraków knew them personally.
They spoke Russian. They said they wanted to ‘ask Dziadok questions.’ I understood where this was going, but it was interesting—I wanted to hear their prepared lines. I said, go ahead, I’m listening. As expected, all their questions concerned my personal life. After just a minute earlier discussing the future of the country, the struggle for freedom, and other ‘high matters,’ such pseudo-questions looked both extremely comical and unpleasant. The guys themselves felt unsure and uncomfortable. It was clear they did not want to be where they were, but they stubbornly continued to talk nonsense. When I gave concise answers to their ‘questions,’ they went for a second round, repeating what they had already said, only now with profanity. It all looked so forced, so unnatural, so far-fetched—you don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Dziadok wrote on his Telegram channel.
Dziadok suggested that the young men may have found a side job on Telegram and were paid to “create a stressful situation for the speaker.”
“It was clear they were very poorly prepared—they struggled to understand where they were and who they were even talking to. Arriving late (by an hour and a half!) suggests they were recruited at the last moment. Their age and untidy appearance point to financial difficulties. In short, the very contingent that is hired for graffiti like ‘Vilnia is ours’ or filming Belarusian rallies in Warsaw,” Mikalai wrote.
Dziadok described the situation as more of a curiosity than something unpleasant.
Earlier, at a Belarusian Freedom Day rally in Vilnius, three young men filmed participants. The footage was later used by Belarusian state propagandists. It was later выяснилось that the young men were Ukrainians who were paid $70 for filming.
