06/20/23
NATO state hosting training camps for coup in Belarus – The Times
“Hundreds” have reportedly joined the insurgency, which Minsk claims is backed by foreign nations | Belarusian exiles in Poland are training for a future armed insurrection in their home nation, The Times has claimed. The militants may also “play a key role” in the Ukraine conflict, according to the British newspaper. ● The report on Sunday focused on a camp near the Polish city of Poznan operated by Bypol – the “group of former officers from Belarus’ security services” who fled the country following protests in 2020. Similar combat training sessions have been taking place in the NATO nation for months, with the number of recruits “in the hundreds,” Bypol’s leadership claims. ● The Times described the recruits at the boot camp as common Belarusians, who want to topple the government of President Alexander Lukashenko in response to a “Stalinesque campaign of torture and detention [that] has all but silenced dissent” in the country. ● The Belarusian government claime[s] it was closely monitoring Bypol’s activities, including their training camps located in Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. 💬 “We know particular recruitment posts; know who is involved. We know the training camps, the identities of instructors, who teaches which parts of the course,” Belarus’ security chief Ivan Tertel claimed in April. ● The group is using terrorist tactics to pave the way for an insurrection in Belarus and acts as a tool of foreign states, the senior official said. The same masterminds “are the driving forces in terms of geopolitical problems that our neighbors have,” he added.