Expert: FSB And Russian Foreign Intelligence May Work In Belarus

Russian special services do not ask permission to conduct operations in Belarus.

The report of the Lithuanian State Security Department is almost entirely devoted to our eastern neighbors: the word “Russia” appears in the document 130 times. The name of Belarus appears in the text 25 times. We are considered by Vilnius almost as a subordinate state – to Russian politicians, military and... spies. The latter, they say, are very interested in Lithuanians, whose relatives are in Belarus, Belsat reports.

“Politicians or some Lithuanian figures who have relatives or businesses in Belarus or Russia are an object for operations,” – Laurynas Kasčiūnas from the Security Committee of the Seimas of Lithuania says.

Russians may try to recruit such Lithuanians, the authors of the report warn.

We should know that the FSB deals with the post-Soviet countries in Russia. However, Lithuania – on the one hand, a former Soviet republic, and on the other – the country of the European Union and NATO – can be overseen by practically all special services in the territory of Belarus.

“Both the FSB and the Foreign Intelligence Service, as well as the GRU of the General Staff of Russia, who, naturally, do not coordinate their specific operations with Belarusian colleagues, but within the frame for interaction, they inform that certain actions will be carried out,” – Mikhail Samus from the Ukrainian Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies explains.

The question is in the degree of this information sharing. According to interstate agreements, the Russian special services have to get official permission from Minsk for any operation. But in practice it looks strange: after the abduction of Ukrainian Pavel Grib in Homel by FSB agents and his removal to Smolensk, Belarus did not disown that act and did not take part of the responsibility for it.