Subsequently, the yacht may have been sold to a former employee of the Belarusian KGB.
The former employee of Lukashenko's administration, who helped the opposition and went missing in Turkey in 2025, was kidnapped from a yacht in the Black Sea by FSB officers.
Anatoly Kotov, a former employee of the Belarusian President's Administration, a diplomat who worked at the Belarusian embassy in Poland and the National Olympic Committee, arrived in Turkey in August 2025, went out to sea on a yacht in the Black Sea, and disappeared without a trace. Journalists from the "Belarusian Investigative Center" and Deutsche Welle found out that the Russian FSB is involved in Kotov's disappearance.
After refusing to support the regime's actions in 2020, when protests were suppressed in Belarus, Kotov moved to Poland, where he began cooperating with the Belarusian opposition. Kotov is believed to have been behind the Telegram channel "Nik and Mike," which mocked Lukashenko and published insider information about him. In 2022, the deputy director of the Belarusian news agency BELTA was sentenced to five years for leaking information to "Nik and Mike." In 2024, Kotov was sentenced in absentia to 12 years. He was placed on the wanted list in Belarus and Russia.
Kotov set off on the yacht Shells from the Turkish city of Trabzon with three people: a former Belarusian security officer, the head of security for the ice arena in Sochi, and assistant to a local deputy, Petr Grib, Russian Yuriy Golovanov, who was connected to Kotov's colleague from his work in the Belarusian Olympic Committee, and Azerbaijani Kakhira Einalova. Investigators point to a possible intimate relationship between Kotov and Einalova, but it is unknown what prompted the critic of the Belarusian regime to board the yacht heading to Sochi.
The "Belarusian Investigative Center" reports that on August 22, Grib and Golovanov instructed the crew to head to the city of Ochamchira in the unrecognized Abkhazia. The city has a base of the FSB border service of the Russian Federation. There, a ship with FSB border guards approached the yacht, who took Kotov and ordered the yacht's captain to remove him from the passenger list. Only Einalova returned to Trabzon. Grib and Golovanov disembarked in Sukhum, then headed to Russia.
Subsequently, the yacht may have been sold to former Belarusian KGB officer Yuriy Serykh, who once worked with Kotov in the National Olympic Committee of Belarus. Kotov invited Serykh to his wedding as a friend.
Serykh is the owner of the Belarusian company "BTS Global," which is engaged in drone production.
Previously, Yuriy Puzikov, a passenger on the yacht, disembarked in Trabzon before Kotov's arrival.
Neither Turkey nor Poland is investigating the disappearance of the former member of Lukashenko's team.
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