Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo stated on Tuesday that the United States is deeply concerned by the reported abduction of Belarusian Coordination Council member Marya Kalesnikava, Spokesman Anton Rodnenkou, and Executive Secretary Ivan Krautsou. The three were reportedly abducted on September 7. The next day there was an attempt to forcefully exile them to Ukraine.
Michael Pompeo commended the courage of Ms. Kalesnikava and the Belarusian people in peacefully asserting their right to pick their leaders in free and fair elections in the face of unjustified violence and repression by the Belarusian authorities.
The Belarusian authorities have brazenly beat peaceful marchers in broad daylight and have detained hundreds. There are also reports of more frequent abductions.
Mike Pompeo warned on Tuesday that the U.S. is considering “additional targeted sanctions” against the regime of strongman President Alexandr Lukashenko.
“The United States is deeply concerned by the reported abduction September 7th in Belarus of Coordination Council member Marya Kalesnikava, Spokesman Anton Rodnenkou, and Executive Secretary Ivan Krautsou,” Pompeo told reporters, in the first official U.S. statement about the kidnappings.
Kalesnikava has become one of the primary figures against Lukashenko. According to several eyewitness accounts, Kalesnikava, 38, was forcibly seized by the OMON (Lukenshenko’s security police) on September 7th and placed in a van. A day later, sources said, there was an attempt to force her, Rodnenkou, and Krautsou to cross the border into Ukraine. The attempt was halted when Lukenshenko tore up her passport.
In response, Pompeo said that “in coordination with our partners and allies, [the U.S.] is considering additional targeted sanctions to promote accountability for those involved in human rights abuses and repression in Belarus.”

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He also made it clear that the Belarusian authorities are responsible for ensuring “the safety of Kalesnikava and all those unjustly detained.”
“We call on the Belarusian authorities to end the violence against their people and release all those who have been unjustly detained, including U.S. citizen Vitali Shkliarov, and engage in meaningful dialogue with genuine representatives of Belarusian society,” Pompeo added.
According to her spokesperson, Kolesnikova is currently being held in a prison in central Minsk. Her father received a phone call from a representative of the Investigation Committee of Belarus, informing him that his daughter was being held at an Interior Ministry detention center in the capital, Kolesnikova’s spokesperson said.
A month after a hotly disputed election, Belarus’s longtime leader, President Alexander Lukashenko, is trying to “disrupt the opposition’s ability to sustain large-scale protests by arresting or expelling all organizers,” according to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C.
At some point, unlike the past 3 presidential administrations, the Trump admin in a 2nd term is going to end up addressing yet another problem (i.e. NK, Iran, China etc.) that each president before has punted along - and that is the guy that was given the full page in the NYTimes op/ed to voice is 'concern' on the anniversary that is coming up tomorrow - 8 years ago.
Unlike Obama - I don't think that after the election - Trump is going to have a lot of more leeway for Vlad the Short.
FWIW - to me personally, one of the more annoying things about the mass hysteria red scare perpetuated in the american media by former intelligence and diplomatic personalities in the past 4 years, and still ongoing today (i.e. John Sipher and Michael McFaul - for just one example) - is that these GD idiots that claim to know what's right and wrong - have done NOTHING to stop Russian influence, and in the aforementioned pairing - during their watch - ENABLED Russian expansionism and influence- and they are just on the heels of idiots that go back through the Bush admin and the Clinton admin that were more interestiing in looting after 1991.
For an interesting look at the time period and what kind of thing really was happening with regard to the immediate aftermath of the fall of the soviet union - check out Operation Odessa on Netflix. (thanks to Skipper).
Since then, not a single American administration (clinton, Bush, Obama) did anything to halt the Russian aggressive moves that Putin has made his known desires, and what Vlad was able to accomplish under the O-admin watch? Crimea? The Black Sea - etc. etc....
anyway - that's all this is - as James Woolsey has said (who negotiated the end of the Soviet Union in 1989-1990) -
Russians are not hard to understand. They push out on their own borders as far as they can until they get pushback, and when you break down and destroy their strategies - they're sweethearts at the table.
To date - nobody has done that to post Soviet Union Russia led by Vladimir Putin.