KYIV, Ukraine — A prominent activist who helped his fellow Belarusians seek refuge in Ukraine has been found dead in a Kyiv park near his home, Ukrainian police said Tuesday, leaving others who are self-exiled fearful that even countries considered havens are no longer safe from Belarus’s strongman, Alexander Lukashenko.
Vitaly Shishov, who led the Belarusian House in Ukraine that helps people fleeing from Belarus to settle abroad, was reported missing by his partner on Aug. 2 after he did not return from his morning run.
Police said Tuesday he was found hanged. They have launched a criminal case for suspected murder and said they will explore all possible scenarios, including murder disguised as suicide.
[Why are so many migrants coming to one of Europe’s smallest countries? Blame Belarus, officials say.]
Although Ukraine has been a popular landing spot for many Belarusian and Russian dissidents in recent years, others question whether it is safe from state security agents who all used to be under one Soviet umbrella. In the past five years, two Russians critical of the Kremlin have been killed in Kyiv: former lawmaker Denis Voronenkov in 2017 and investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet in 2016. In both cases, Ukraine’s government alleged Russian involvement among their versions of what happened.
It is unclear whether Lukashenko’s regime is connected to Shishov’s death. But Aliaksei Frantskevich, head of the Belarus Crisis Center in Lviv, Ukraine, said he suspects Shishov’s death could be “some kind of instrument of intimidation” for other Belarusian activists in exile.
Frantskevich said Shishov’s colleagues told him Monday that the activist recently described being surveilled.
In the past year, facing the greatest opposition challenge to his 27-year reign, Lukashenko has brutally cracked down on any dissent, arresting thousands. The repression has sparked an exodus, prompting many Belarusians to leave the country for its Baltic neighbors Poland and Lithuania. Ukraine is considered another sanctuary — Belarusians are the second-largest minority there after Russians.
“They’re doing this [intimidation and crackdown] in Belarus in a directed manner, and now they’ve moved on to neighboring countries,” Frantskevich said. “Ukraine is next door, there’s visa-free travel and a large number of Belarusians, and some are more radically inclined.”
In a brazen display in May, Lukashenko showed just how far he is willing to go to capture a dissident. He ordered a MiG-29 fighter jet to force a civilian plane to land as it was flying over Belarus from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania. Belarusian authorities then arrested one of its passengers, Roman Protasevich, the founder of an opposition media outlet.
In another international scandal this week, a Belarusian sprinter at the Olympics, Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, issued a public plea for help Sunday because she feared for her safety after criticizing the Belarusian Olympic Committee.
Tsimanouskaya said Belarusian officials were pressuring her to board a flight back to Minsk against her wishes. She asked Japanese police for protection at Haneda Airport in Tokyo.
On Monday, she received a humanitarian visa from Poland.
Alena Talstaya, co-founder of Movement of Solidarity “Together” in Kyiv, which works with Belarusian refugees, said Shishov’s colleagues conducted searches until late Monday evening at the park where Shishov’s body was found Tuesday morning.
“We know that the intelligence services work not only on Ukrainian territory, but on the territory of European countries,” she said. “Whom it was done with or with whose help, we can only guess.”
Khurshudyan reported from Moscow. Mary Ilyushina in Moscow contributed to this report.
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