{"id":599228,"date":"2026-11-05T12:55:38","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T09:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=599228"},"modified":"2026-11-05T13:51:56","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T10:51:56","slug":"tsapkala-and-balkunets-ask-trump-to-intervene-on-behalf-of-skindzerau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/tsapkala-and-balkunets-ask-trump-to-intervene-on-behalf-of-skindzerau","title":{"rendered":"Tsapkala and Balkunets Ask Trump to Intervene on Behalf of Skindzerau"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Valery Tsapkala<\/strong> (Valery Tsepkalo) and Dzmitry Balkunets<\/strong> (Dmitry Bolkunets) have published<\/a> a letter they sent to US President Donald Trump<\/strong>. They ask Trump to put pressure on Lithuania and prevent the deportation of businessman Dzmitry Skindzerau <\/strong>(Dmitry Skinderev), whose refugee status was revoked<\/a> by the Migration Department of Lithuania’s Ministry of the Interior. The businessman has been deemed a threat to national security and is set to be deported to Belarus.<\/p>\n

In the letter, Tsapkala and Balkunets highlight Trump’s role in securing the release of Belarusian political prisoners, describing it as “the greatest humanitarian achievement in Europe, and perhaps the world, in recent decades.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Yet while you are working to free political prisoners, the Lithuanian authorities are moving in the opposite direction and making efforts to increase their number in Belarus. One way they do so is by declaring Belarusians a threat to national security on fabricated grounds and effectively handing them over to the Belarusian security services,”<\/em> the letter says.<\/p>\n

As examples, they cite the case of Belarusian volunteer Vasil Verameichyk<\/strong><\/a>, who was denied asylum in Lithuania and was subsequently detained in Vietnam and handed over to Belarusian security forces.<\/p>\n

Tsapkala and Balkunets also point to the cases of Volha Karach<\/strong><\/a> and Dzmitry Skindzerau. They claim that the Lithuanian authorities are designating them as threats to national security because they publicly questioned the effectiveness of spending by the United States and the European Union on supporting democratic change in Belarus, funds that were channelled through Lithuania.<\/p>\n

“We ask you to intervene and to instruct Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy John Coale and Vice President JD Vance, who leads your Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, to examine this situation, including the fate of U.S. funds, and to prevent Lithuania\u2019s actions from creating new political prisoners in Belarus. We also ask you to call on Lithuania, a NATO ally, to end the practice of deporting people on political grounds to Belarus and Russia, where they face arrest and threats to their lives,”<\/em> Balkunets and Tsapkala write.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that Lithuanian authorities have justified their decisions to designate Skindzerau and Karach as threats to national security by citing their alleged ties to Russian or Belarusian intelligence services and security agencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Valery Tsapkala (Valery Tsepkalo) and Dzmitry Balkunets (Dmitry Bolkunets) have published a letter they sent to US President Donald Trump. They ask Trump to put pressure on Lithuania and prevent the deportation of businessman Dzmitry Skindzerau (Dmitry Skinderev), whose refugee status was revoked by the Migration Department of Lithuania’s Ministry of the Interior. The businessman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":599229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/6aec5fcf9d32e.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Tsapkala and Balkunets Ask Trump to Intervene on Behalf of Skindzerau"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142338,143090],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-599228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","permalink_manager":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599251,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599228\/revisions\/599251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}