A dozen of drones stolen near the Opera Theatre. A Tut.by editor: “The police did it. We hope to get the equipment back”

“As soon as five drones appeared over the site, they were imme­di­ate­ly led away”, Anton Matol­ka, one of the orga­niz­ers of the cel­e­bra­tions told Nasha Niva. “They have stolen not only the drones which belonged to mass media but also the equip­ment of ordi­nary peo­ple. The lead­ers of the police units that were in charge of secu­ri­ty pre­tend­ed not to know who was doing it. As far as I know, even a drone of the [State-owned] STV TV chan­nel got stolen but they man­aged to land it behind the Opera. I hope that they’ll return the drones”.

Ali­ak­siej Min­chonak, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Bel­sat in Belarus, told Nasha Niva about how the steal­ing hap­pened.

“The police knew we would launch a drone – they wrote down its ser­i­al num­ber. But as soon as the drone got off the ground, we imme­di­ate­ly lost con­trol of it — we only man­aged to trans­fer one shot. The drone was a rental, this toy is not cheap – the price can go up to two thou­sand euros. And who could steal it? The one who has this capac­i­ty; it is clear these are not “just hooli­gans”. Peo­ple who man­aged to broad­cast more footage say that there was some unknown equip­ment on the roof of the Opera The­atre, which is usu­al­ly not there if you look at the pho­tos from ear­li­er days”, said Min­chonak.

The own­er of the drone oper­at­ed by Bel­sat lodged a com­plaint with the police.

A pho­to tak­en by a drone. Radio Lib­er­ty

TUT.BY por­tal also lost a drone

“We worked for about three to four min­utes. We shot some video and then we lost con­trol. It flew away and we still can­not find it. It was the cameraman’s per­son­al drone, so we hope we will be able to get it back”, Mary­na Zolata­va, the edi­tor-in-chief of Tut.by told us.

She is sure she knows where to look for the equip­ment.

“It was the police. Can there be oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties?” Zolata­va summed up.