Missing Belarusian Political Scientist Anatoly Kotov Sailed On A Yacht To Sochi?
- 30.08.2025, 21:59
The family and colleagues of the former official are convinced of his abduction.
Nine days ago, Belarusian political scientist, ex-employee of Lukashenko's administration, head of the international department of the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Fund Anatoli Kotov disappeared in Turkey. Turkish media outlet IHA found that Kotov arrived in Istanbul from Warsaw on August 21 and flew to the Turkish city of Trabzon on the same day.
The Belarusian political scientist, according to the publication, left Turkey through the Trabzon sea border crossing on a flight at 18:35. The media published a photo of a Polish travel document for a foreigner (polski dokument podróży dla cudzoziemca) in the name of Anatoly Kotov.
The Deutsche Welle Istanbul bureau managed to talk to a source in the Trabzon police. The source confirmed that Kotov left Trabzon on August 21, the day he arrived in Turkey. According to him, Kotov went to Sochi on a private yacht. It is known that there is no regular ferry service from this port. Cargo and fishing vessels, cruise ships and private boats leave from there. Theoretically, it is possible to get from Trabzon by sea to all countries in the Black Sea, but the fastest way is to neighboring Georgia or Russia.
Neither Kotov nor the people who accompanied him had any legal problems, for example, issues with documents, "nothing looked suspicious," the source said, so the Turkish police have no reason to investigate.
How many people were accompanying him and who they were, he could not say. According to unconfirmed reports, the yacht was already waiting for Kotov when he arrived from Istanbul to Trabzon.
The Deutsche Welle article was commented on by Kotov's colleague, head of the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation Alexander Opeikin:
- In pure form, we have only one documentary fact of Anatoly's arrival in Istanbul and being in touch until 22.28 Turkish time.
All other information is "from anonymous sources in the Turkish police." That is, there is no real documentary confirmation of his arrival in Trabzon, passport control and further route to Sochi. Therefore, at the moment it is still one of the versions, but it is not a fait accompli, contrary to the media presentation
I repeat: for a voluntary return to Belarus or the Russian Federation this route looks as unusual as possible, because there are direct flights from Istanbul.
Anatoly's family and colleagues, based on all the facts and circumstances of his disappearance, are firmly convinced of his forced abduction, until the opposite is officially proven. There are already lawyers working in Turkey who will request official confirmations from law enforcement agencies," Opeikin wrote in Facebook.
In the early 2000s, Anatoly Kotov worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2006 to 2015, he held various positions at the Belarusian Embassy in Poland, rising from third secretary to senior advisor to the ambassador.
In 2015, he returned to Minsk, where he moved from the Foreign Ministry to work at the National Olympic Committee, which at the time was personally headed by Alexander Lukashenko. Kotov first worked there as a leading specialist, but soon took the position of secretary general.
Then worked in Lukashenko's administration, where he took the position of deputy head of the department of financing state bodies of the Main Financial Department of the dictator's administration.
On August 18, 2020, Kotov resigned from Lukashenko's administration, the same day he signed an open letter of Belarusian athletes who spoke out against election fraud and condemned violence by security forces. Then he moved to Warsaw. In recent years, he cooperated with the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Fund.