Belarusian KGB Says It’s Holding Ukrainian Journalist, Claims He’s A Spy

In a state­ment on Novem­ber 20, the KGB said that Pavlo Sharoyko was arrest­ed on Octo­ber 25.

The state­ment came three days after the head of Ukraine’s Nation­al Union of Jour­nal­ists, Ser­hiy Tomilenko, iden­ti­fied Sharoyko as a cor­re­spon­dent of UA: Ukrain­ian Radio, said he was detained in Belarus on Octo­ber 25, and demand­ed his release.

The Belaru­sian KGB state­ment alleged that Sharoyko was an agent of the Intel­li­gence Direc­torate of Ukraine’s Defense Min­istry and had been work­ing under the cov­er of a jour­nal­ist.

It claimed that Sharoyko con­fessed to hav­ing cre­at­ed a net­work of agents in Belarus to gath­er infor­ma­tion «relat­ed to Belarus’ mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal spheres.» Such state­ments are some­times extract­ed under duress, and there is no way to ver­i­fy the claim.

Ukraine’s Defense Min­istry reject­ed the Belaru­sian KGB’s claims in a Novem­ber 20 state­ment.

«The Pub­lic Rela­tions Ser­vice of the Defense Min­istry of Ukraine has been autho­rized to state that…this infor­ma­tion is not true,» the Main Intel­li­gence Direc­torate said in a state­ment.

Sharoyko’s detain­ment was first report­ed on Novem­ber 17 by Zurab Alasa­nia, direc­tor of the Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny of Ukraine.

Belarus-based rights group Charter97 quot­ed Sharoyko’s col­leagues as say­ing he had been work­ing on sto­ries relat­ed to the search for Pavlo Hryb, a 19-year-old Ukrain­ian cit­i­zen who dis­ap­peared in Belarus after being arrest­ed and was lat­er found to have been sent to Rus­sia, where he faces ter­ror­ism-relat­ed charges.

Also on Novem­ber 20, the direc­tor of the Ukrain­ian For­eign Min­istry’s Con­sular Ser­vice, Vasyl Kyry­lych, told RFE/RL that the min­istry had sent a for­mal note to Belaru­sian author­i­ties regard­ing media reports that said anoth­er Ukrain­ian cit­i­zen, Olek­san­dr Sky­ba, was detained in Belarus on Novem­ber 16.

The reports said that Sky­ba, the head of a fac­to­ry in east­ern Ukraine, dis­ap­peared dur­ing a one-day busi­ness trip in Min­sk on Novem­ber 15 and told his wife by phone a day lat­er that he was detained by the Belaru­sian KGB.

The Ukrain­ian Embassy «is demand­ing imme­di­ate infor­ma­tion regard­ing the rea­sons» for Sky­ba’s detain­ment and want­ed to know where and under what con­di­tions he is being held, Kyry­lych told RFE/RL. «We received no offi­cial infor­ma­tion regard­ing the issue from the Belaru­sian side.»

Rela­tions between Rus­sia, Belarus, and Ukraine — most­ly Slav­ic for­mer Sovi­et republics with deep his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al ties — have been strained since Moscow seized con­trol of Ukraine’s Crimea region and threw its sup­port behind armed sep­a­ratists in east­ern Ukraine in 2014.