Alexander Lukashenko says ‘terrorist from Ukrainian intelligence’ has been arrested for involvement in February 25 airfield explosion

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Tuesday that a “terrorist from Ukrainian intelligence” and his “accomplices” have been arrested for their alleged involvement in last week’s “sabotage” attempt at a military airfield in Machulishchy, according to the Belarusian state-owned news agency Belta.

The incident in question happened early on the morning of February 26. After several explosions occurred at the Machulishchy airfield, activists from the anti-Lukashenko organization BYPOL reported that two drones had dropped explosive devices on a Russian military A-50 early warning aircraft.

Lukashenko said Tuesday that the Ukrainian Security Service and the American CIA began working on an “operation against Belarus” about 6–8 months ago, though he didn’t provide evidence for this claim.

According to the Belarusian president, the “terrorist” behind the attack is a Kryvyi Rih native with both Russian and Ukrainian citizenship who was most recently living in Crimea. Lukashenko said the person was recruited by Ukrainian intelligence “around 2014,” that he’s “either an IT worker or well-versed in IT technologies,” and that he has relatives in Austria. He didn’t reveal the suspect’s name.

After months of training with the “most advanced technologies,” Lukashenko said, the suspect traveled through Poland, Latvia, and Russia to Belarus, where he carried out the attack with a drone too small for Belarus’s security systems to detect. According to Lukashenko, the plane that the attacker targeted did not sustain significant damage.