Remember when Belarusian partisans revealed they had developed secret plans to remove Lukashenko?

In February 2024, Belarusian partisans revealed that they were working on a secret plot to oust the country's leader Alexander Lukashenko from government.

The partisans were planning a coup against the Balrus' longtime ruler and they claimed it would be executed when the time was right according to a report on the alleged plan to oust the Belarusian President.

The partisan group is known as the Association of Security Forces of Belarus (BYPOL), a partisan organization founded by the employees of former law enforcement agencies in the country and dedicated to restoring Belarus’ democracy.  

BYPOL supports exiled Belarusian political activist Svetlana Tikhanovskaya taking over the reins of power in the country so new presidential and parliamentary elections can be held to build new democratic institutions its website notes. 

Politico reported that the partisans operate out of Poland and have been training officers and working to undermine the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine since BYPOL believes that the Kremlin’s failure in Ukraine will help to free Belarus. 

“We have worked out a plan and will put it into effect at the right time,” explained former Belarusian police officer Aliaksandr Azarau while speaking with the Belgian media outlet VRT according to a translation from Politico. 

Photo Credit: Twitter @Tsihanouskaya

Azarau told the Belgian media outlet that Vladimir Putin’s defeat in Ukraine was critical to weakening Lukashenko in Belarus. “Without Putin, there is no Lukashenko,” he said before explaining why Ukraine was tied to Belarus. 

If Ukraine can launch a successful offensive against Russia, then Putin won’t have the time to deal with Belarus according to Azarau. This is why the partisan group is doing everything that it can to support the Ukrainian war effort. 

In February 2023, BYPOL partisans said that they were behind a sabotage mission that destroyed a Russian military airplane deployed to an airfield near the Belarusian capital of Minsk according to a report at the time from Reuters. 

The partisans used a drone to destroy a Beriev A-50 early aircraft command and control aircraft, a sabotage mission that Azarau told his followers on Telegram was carried out by Belarusians. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0

"We work on, continuing our battle against Russian occupiers on the territory of Belarus and with the criminal regime of Lukashenko that has unlawfully seized power," Azarau explained according to a translation from Reuters. 

The Daily Beast reported that BYPOL has also trained members of the all-Belarusian Kalinowski Regiment fighting in Ukraine, a group that joined the war on Kyiv’s side of the fight shortly after Russia launched its invasion.

Photo Credit: Twitter @belwarriors

“Early on in the war,” explained the Daily Beast’s Shannon Vavra, “Belarusian saboteurs hacked and disrupted railway operations, leaving Russia’s logistics in chaos in the early days of the invasion.”

Azarau provided few other details about the plot to overthrow Lukashenko but clues for BYPOL’s future plans but his remarks came only days after Belarus held parliamentary elections, the first since the 2020 elections that sparked protests against Lukasehnko. 

Le Monde reported that Lukashenko told the country he planned to run for reelection in 2025 via his social media channels, a move the French news outlet said would “extend his grip on the country to 36 years.”

Whether or not BYPOL could effect its coup against Belarusia’s longtime leader before the next election was not known at the time, but the group appeared to be making a lot of progress toward its ultimate goals based on the recruitment numbers it revealed in February 2024. 

Azarau noted in his interview that roughly 200,000 people had registered with BYPOL to put up barricades, cause traffic jams, and gather themselves in large crowds in key locations when the coup took place. 

Roughly 5,000 of BYPOL's new recruits also said they wanted to take part in sabotage operations as well. However, these operations never ended up taking place since and no coup has occurred since Azarau's interview. 

Lukashenko has been what Euronews called Belarus' "strongman leader" for 30 years of July 2024. He has also been referred to as "Europe's last dictator" according to the news outlet, a name Lukashenko earned early in his career as the Belarusian President.

In October 2024, the Investigative Committee of Belarus launched cases into 45 individuals living abroad and accused them of planning to seize power in Belarus according to AKI Press. It is unclear from the report if the individuals being investigated are connected to BYPOL.