Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he thwarted a coup attempt and an assassination attempt on him and his family, planned by the United States of America (USA), and announced that two people had been arrested with Moscow's help.
The Belarusian Security Service (KGB) announced last night that in a "special operation" it had broken up "an organized terrorist-oriented group that planned the physical elimination of the president and his family" and "organized an armed rebellion to seize power by violent means."
According to Lukashenka, the Russian Security Service (FSB) arrested two Belarusian citizens in Moscow, namely political scientist Alexander Feduta and lawyer Yuri Zenkovich, who also holds American citizenship.
"We took the group into custody, they showed us how they planned everything, I remained speechless. Then we discovered the work of intelligence services that were clearly foreign, very likely the CIA and the FBI," Lukashenko said in a video released by the presidency.
Neither Russia nor the US commented on Lukashenko's claims.
The head of the Belarusian opposition, Svetlana Tihanovska, who is in Lithuania, condemned the provocations of the Russian and Belarusian security services, in which the citizens of Belarus and the USA were involved.
Lukashenko, who has been at the head of the country since 1994, has been facing protests for months challenging his re-election to the post of president in the elections last August.
Tens of thousands of citizens took part in the protests several times on the streets of Minsk and other cities before they were gradually reduced after constant repression by the authorities.
Most of the opposition leaders were imprisoned or forced into exile.
Despite the European and American sanctions imposed on Lukashenka and senior officials of his government, the Belarusian president, supported in Russia, does not show any sign of opening up to the protest movement but is intensifying his repression.
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