PACE Urged Turkey To Take Measures To Search For The Missing Belarusian Political Scientist Anatoly Kotov
- 3.09.2025, 17:27
The organization's rapporteur said the former official could be in danger.
With a call to "take all necessary measures" to establish the whereabouts of a former employee of the Lukashenko administration, political scientist, head of the international department of the Belarusian Foundation who disappeared after a visit to Turkey the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's (PACE) General Rapporteur on Governance and Ethics in Sport Mogens Jensen addressed Ankara.
He recalled that the latter "for the active defense of athletes and principled rejection of repression" was sentenced in absentia by the Belarusian authorities to 12 years in prison.
"The declaration of him wanted by Belarus and Russia raises serious concerns about his safety," said Mogens Jensen.
The speaker "urged" the Turkish authorities "to take all necessary measures to search for Mr. Kotov, to ensure his safety and to clarify the circumstances of his disappearance."
Reminder, 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 analyst, 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 foreigners (polski dokument podróży dla cudzoziemca) in the name of Anatoly Kotov.
The Istanbul bureau of Deutsche Welle 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 traveled 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.
In the early 2000s, Anatoly Kotov worked at the Foreign Ministry. 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.