UNA-UNSO: “Moscow is most interested in Minsk accident”

Belarusian special police services accused Ukrainian national patriots UNA-UNSO of teaching terrorist methods to Belarusian radicals in their “forest camps”. It was also noted that they were likely to have been connected with the explosion during a festive concert in Minsk. ERB asked the head of the executive committee of the civil organization UNA-UNSO Mikola Lyahovich whether it was true. According to him, the organization put an end to any military activities almost 12 years ago and has nothing to do with any explosions or other terrorist acts either in Ukraine or abroad.

Mіkola Lyahovіch: “The organization stopped its military activities in Ukraine and abroad in 1996. That is why we have nothing to do with any explosions”.

The head of the executive committee recalled that it was not the first attempt to accuse them or terrorist acts abroad. UNA-UNSO was accused of explosions in Moscow some time ago.

Mіkola Lyahovіch: “The FSS distributed official information about some members of our organization suspected of being connected with it. However, former FSS members claimed that the action was organized by the Kremlin to allow Putin to come to power again. I think it is the same game”.

According to him, members of the organization do create so-called summer camps. According to the head of the executive committee of UNA-UNSO, they are dedicated to ideological rather than terrorist issues.

Mіkola Lyahovіch: “The organization creates summer camps from time to time. They are mostly ideological, but there are sports competitions too. They have nothing to do with anything military, illegal or terrorist. We are preparing patriotic young people who would be ready to join the Ukrainian Army to protect Ukrainian borders”.

The representative of UNA-UNSO admitted that their organization had some contacts with Belarusian youth patriotic organizations and that they could visit their summer camps. However, he said that there was no terrorist training conducted there.

Mіkola Lyahovіch: “Our organization has been cooperating with Belarusian national patriotic youth organizations for a long time. I would not specify them and will not tell you any names so that I will not let anyone down. We attend their official meetings. However, our cooperation is official and there is nothing terrorist about it. We help them in some ways. If they took part in our meetings, it was legal and there was nothing underground about it.  Speaking about some preparation, I should note that we did not organize any summer camps at that time. I think that the information about the training camps was preparation for the explosions. Unfortunately, I did not predict it in my comments”.

The head of the executive committee of UNA-UNSO sees “Moscow’s trace” in the fact that Ukrainian instructors teaching to make blasting assemblies out of tomato juice packs have replaced Georgian instructors teaching to put dead spiders in water pipes. According to him, the Kremlin quarreled with the official Tbilisi at that moment and engaged the official Minsk in it. Now they are looking for support to preserve their military base in Sevastopol. It is known that the Ukrainian authorities are not going to change their decision to drive Russian military men out of the Crimea by 2017.

Mіkola Lyahovіch: “Moscow it interested in the accident most of all as it is using Belarusian special police troops and the authoritarian regime of the Belarusian President to cause a quarrel between Belarus and Ukraine and to control the situation this way. The Federal Security Service is doing the same thing that KGB used to do. The FSS has a lot of experience in such provocations”.