MINSK. March 7 (Interfax) - The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was involved in an act of sabotage against a Russian A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft at Machulishchy air base, the Belarusian State Security Committee (KGB) said.
"As a result of carrying out counterintelligence measures the KGB has exposed the direct involvement of SBU operatives and bosses in organizing the terrorist attack, uncovered a system used by Ukraine's special services to recruit among own citizens for staging acts of terrorism in foreign states, identified the dummy organizations used for their training and instruction, and examined a tactic of using explosive substances, the mechanisms of communication and running an agent network, exposed and liquidated channels of agent evacuation," KGB spokesman Konstantin Bychek was quoted by the BelTA state news agency as saying on Tuesday.
The saboteur had been held at a hideout during a joint KGB raid with police, border guards and other law enforcers, Bychek said
The initial inquiries "suggest the terror plot involved the agents of Polish secret services from among the so-called Belarusian fugitives - advocates of a violent overthrow of the constitutional system, active participants in the August 2020 events," Bychek said.
"As a result, an agents network was uncovered and eliminated, consisting of the Belarusian citizens involved in aiding the agent-terrorist, his legalization in the Republic of Belarus and his failed evacuation attempt," Bychek said. According to the criminal case files, "these individuals had been hired for illegal activities by foreign-based Belarusian extremist political emigre centers which, effectively at the instruction of Ukrainian and Polish secret services," used those citizens "as expendables."
The KGB investigative directorate has launched a criminal inquiry under Article 289 of the Belarusian Criminal Code. More than 20 people were arrested, including the perpetrator, an agent of the SBU, Bychek said.
Meanwhile, a suspect arrested in Belarus said he had crossed into the republic from Russia and operated at SBU's behest. "I used a Russian passport to travel to Russia and onward [to Belarus]," the man told his interrogators in a footage released by BelTA on Tuesday.
The suspect introduced himself as Nikolai Vladimirovih Shvets, a Ukrainian citizen, born in 1993. In his telling, he had prepared the act of sabotage in Kiev, at the instruction of the SBU. "I worked with the SBU, the city of Kiev," the suspect said.
He said that he had used two drones for the explosion at Machulishchy on February 26.
Earlier on Tuesday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced the arrest of suspects in the Machulishchy explosion, including one Russian who was recruited by Ukrainian security services. In total, more than 20 accomplices of the perpetrator of the sabotage have been arrested, Lukashenko said.