Belarusian ambassadors linked to military intelligence, investigation claims

A number of Belarusian ambassadors are linked to the military intelligence service. In particular, these are the current Belarusian ambassador to Switzerland Aliaksandr Hanevich and the former ambassador to Japan Ruslan Yesin. This is claimed by the former security forces initiative BELPOL in its new investigation.

Aliaksandr Hanevich was born in 1963, graduated from the Ussuriysk Higher Military Automobile Command School, and then from the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Diplomatic School of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He began his diplomatic career in 1993 as a third secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2020, he became Belarus' ambassador to Switzerland.

BELPOL claims that documents do not match the official version of Hanevich's biography. As far back as 2002 and 2008, he was listed as a military serviceman and was attached to military unit 64170. This unit is linked to the Foreign Information and Communication Department of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Armed Forces.

The authors of the investigation also found a note in the traffic police database indicating that Hanevich had previously been registered with military unit 51886, which BELPOL links to the GRU intelligence centre in Minsk.

The investigation also states that in 1994, Hanevich received a certificate confirming his citizenship of the Republic of Belarus. The document was issued by the Personnel Department of the Belarusian Ministry of Defence, while his official biography states that he was already working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time.

The second diplomat to attract the attention of the investigation's authors is Ruslan Yesin, who from 2017 to 2022 served as Belarus' ambassador to Japan, and concurrently to Australia and New Zealand.

He was born in 1969 in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In 1990, he graduated from the Minsk Higher Military-Political Combined Arms School, and later from the Belarusian State Economic University. He initially worked in the international cultural relations department of the Ministry of Culture, and in the mid-1990s studied at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after which he moved to work at the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In the traffic police database, BELPOL found a photo of Yesin from the mid-1990s — he was photographed in the uniform of a captain of the Armed Forces for his driver's licence. According to the investigation's authors, this may indicate that after graduating from the military school, he continued his service. And the diplomatic position was merely a cover.

BELPOL also named alleged KGB and GRU employees at Belarusian diplomatic missions in the UAE, Vietnam, Israel, Indonesia, India, South Korea, China, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Brazil and Venezuela. Some of them hold multiple passports. For example, adviser to the embassy in the UAE Leanid Holub, according to BELPOL, is a KGB officer who previously served in "Alpha". In 2011, he obtained a passport in the name of Leanid Yamialyanaŭ. Other diplomats also hold "cover passports".

BELPOL says that the collected materials have been handed over to the competent authorities of democratic states.