MOSCOW — A Belarusian antigovernment activist was found dead in a park near his home in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday, and the police there said they had begun an investigation into whether it was a murder or suicide. The activist, Vitaly Shishov, went missing on Monday after going out for a morning jog, said his colleagues, who accused the Belarusian authorities of killing him. The Kyiv police said that Mr. Shishov had been found hanged in the park and that their investigation was considering the possibility that the death was a “murder masked as a suicide.”“The full picture of events will be confirmed after the questioning of witnesses, the analysis of video recordings” and other investigative steps, the police said. Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Belarus’s authoritarian leader, who has been in power since 1994, has long repressed dissent at home and jailed thousands after large-scale protests over his rule last year. Now, events in recent weeks suggest that he is also escalating his campaign against the growing number of Belarusian exiles abroad.

Source: New York Times August 03, 2021 10:37 UTC