In Belarus, 12 people were sentenced for shooting down a Russian warplane

In February 2023, a group of opponents of the dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s regime announced that they had destroyed a Russian A-50 reconnaissance aircraft, which was at the airport on the outskirts of Minsk.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a group of Belarusian security service personnel who had sided with the opposition during mass protests following the falsification of the 2020 election results.

Russia did not comment on the news, and Minsk initially denied it, but later admitted that the Ukrainian security services had carried out a “terrorist attack”.

The Minsk city court has sentenced 12 people accused of the terrorist attack at Machulischu airport to prison terms of two years and three months to 25 years, the Prosecutor’s Office of Belarus has announced.

Currently, only five of the criminals are in Belarus – Denis Sokolov, Yevgānij Tochicki, Maksim Lopatin, Sergej Loparev and Oleg Sichev.

The organizer of the sabotage, Mykolais Shvets, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, was extradited to Ukraine this summer as part of a prisoner exchange.

Aleksandrs Azarovs, Vitaly Yakutika and Mihails Demins are also outside Belarus.

Since the Lukashenko regime in 2022 allowed Russia to use the territory of Belarus as a bridgehead to attack Ukraine again, opposition activists have carried out a series of acts of sabotage, to especially on railways, to prevent the movement of Russian troops.