Maria Kolesnikova passport, Belarus opposition leader 'ripped up passport at Ukraine border'

 Maria Kolesnikova passport, Belarus opposition leader 'ripped up passport at Ukraine border'.

The Belarusian opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova ripped up her passport in order to avoid being deported from her own country, according to a Ukrainian minister and media reports.

On Monday, masked men kidnapped Kolesnikova from the centre of Minsk and drove her away. Two of her opposition colleagues also vanished. The three activists were later driven to the Alexandrovka border with Ukraine in a car that arrived at about 4am on Tuesday.

Kolesnikova refused to cross the border and deliberately ripped up her passport, according to local sources. “When attempting to deport her, she tore her passport and could not be allowed into the territory of Ukraine by border guards,” a source told Interfax-Ukraine agency.

The latest repression against opposition figures in Belarus came as a group of Russian journalists, including the editor-in-chief of Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, flew into Minsk for Lukashenko’s first interview since he declared a controversial victory in a presidential election a month ago.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has promised to send a contingent of special forces to Belarus to prop up Lukashenko if necessary, and is due receive the embattled Belarusian leader in Moscow for talks in the coming days.

Roman Babayan, one of the Russian journalists at the interview, wrote on Telegram that Lukashenko said he will not step down, saying his supporters would be attacked, but he did acknowledge that he may have overstayed his welcome after 26 years in power. “I may have sat in the president’s chair a little too long,” he said, according to a quote tweeted by Russia Today.

Lukashenko also ruled out dialogue with a coordination council, set up by the opposition, of which Kolesnikova is one of a seven-person presidium. Authorities have been systematically tageting its leaders in recent weeks.

Ukraine’s deputy interior minister, Anton Gerashchenko, posted on Facebook that Kolesnikova had successfully prevented “a forcible expulsion from her native country”. “It wasn’t a voluntary trip,” he wrote, calling Kolesnikova “this brave woman”.

The activists with her – Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov – were in Ukraine, officials in Kyiv confirmed. The Belarus state Belta news agency said Kolesnikova was pushed out of the car, which continued without her across the Ukraine border. Belarusian guards then appear to have recaptured Kolsenikova. The exact sequence of events at the border and her whereabouts were unclear.