President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has launched a disinformation campaign in Europe on the poisoning of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. During the meeting with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Lukashenko informed him about the alleged interception of a phone call between Warsaw and Berlin. As Lukashenko says, the call was intercepted by electronic military intelligence whose units deployed on the western borders of Belarus. Minsk planned to forward the call transcript to Russia’s Federal Security Service.
The goal of this operation is to strengthen Lukashenko’s negotiating positions with Moscow in searching for the scenarios to maintain himself in power and get security guarantees for the Belarusian president, and to demonstrate external intervention in Belarus’ elections as well.
The audio record was made public at the same time when the security services leadership staff was changed. Former Defense Minister General Andrei Ravkov, who has headed the State Security Council since January of this year, stepped down and was replaced by Valery Vakulchik who has served as the KGB director until later. His post in the KGB was taken by Ivan Tertel, a KGB career official who most recently served as chairman of Belarus ’financial investigative force known as the State Control Committee.
In 2012, the Council of the European Union recognized Vakulchik as responsible for monitoring, filtering, controlling and intercepting various communication channels.
Belarus has no technical capabilities of strategic SIGINT to intercept information on international communication channels. Military electronic warfare stations cannot intercept the signal from Warsaw to Berlin.
The audio material analysis indicates the record is was edited and the voice is program-synthesized. The text is a translation of a Russian-language material prepared by Belarusian KGB officers. The often repeated clichés used by the Soviet Union-grown up Russians who have a distorted understanding of the semantic and lexical models in foreigners’ speech prove this very fact as well. The use ofEnglish language in the ‘negotiations’ between Warsaw and Berlin shows a shortage of qualified foreign language speaking staff in the KGB.
The text of the published audio records has the following main points:
1. Minsk positions Warsaw as the operation key element and Berlin reports to it. It sounds absurdly and shows that Minsk has chosen an easier target without being compromised after the record is forwarded to the Russians. Obviously, Lukashenko is afraid of provoking a Russia-Germany conflict; that was why Poland was chosen as the target since in this scenario the Kremlin will choose Germany.
2. The Belarusians neither confirmed nor refuted Navalny’s poisoning. Thus, they give the Russians the opportunity to question the results of Navalny’s exams, however, they avoid direct refutation since they suppose a chemical warfare agent in Navalny’s body.
3. By mentioning Putin in the text Minsk shows its intention to get Russia engaged into Belarus’ internal political crisis. Lukashenko decided to share responsibility with Putin by linking Navalny’s case to the rigged elections in his country. However, against the background of the thesis on necessity ‘to have Putin drown in the problems of Russia’, Belarus’ KGB, on the contrary, is drawing the Kremlin into the Belarusian conflict.
4. The authors of the text have integrated the thesis that Lukashenko keeps the situation under control and he is still a ‘hard nut to crack’. Most likely, this statement is addressed to Belarusian recipients since the Russians control Belarus’ law enforcement agencies, army and KGB and have reliable information about the situation in the country.
On its level the publicized record is similar to the fake satellite photo of the Ukrainian fighter in the MH-17 case that the Russian military intelligence drew under time-limited conditions. Thus, Belarus’ KGB new leadership decided to take advantage of the Russian opposition politician’s poisoning in the interests of Lukashenko. The idea of radio interception falsification likely belongs to Vakulchik. In terms of human and technical resources, the operation was conducted at a low level and failed. At the same time, the level of risks for Lukashenko regime has ramped up dramatically.
