Wife of missing Belarus dissident hopes Trump envoy can find him

By Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) -The wife of a Belarusian dissident who disappeared after flying to Turkey three months ago says she is pinning her hopes of finding him on U.S. President Donald Trump's new special envoy to Belarus.

Anatol Kotau, 45, flew into Istanbul from Warsaw early on the afternoon of Thursday, August 21. In the following hours, he exchanged a series of Telegram messages with his wife Anastasia in Poland and promised to let her know where he would be staying.

He never did. Then he stopped responding to her.

After many weeks of fruitless efforts to trace him, Kotau's supporters say they fear he may have fallen into the hands of the Belarusian KGB security service or Russia's FSB.

As Trump's envoy John Coale prepares for a new round of negotiations with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to seek the release of political prisoners, Anastasia told Reuters she hoped that her husband's release could form part of a deal.

If Kotau is indeed detained in Belarus, "then I have great hope for the American negotiations with Lukashenko. And I would really like for my husband's name to be included on the lists for release, for exchange," she said in a phone interview, her first with an international news organisation about the case. She asked to be identified only by her first name.

WHO IS ANATOL KOTAU?

Kotau is a former top sports official in Belarus who was secretary general of the national Olympic committee and later worked in Lukashenko's presidential administration. He quit in 2020 in protest over an election that the opposition and Western governments accused the veteran authoritarian leader of stealing.

Mass demonstrations broke out after the election and were crushed by Lukashenko's security forces. Kotau and Anastasia fled the country with just a couple of suitcases, she says.

Settling in Poland, he found work with an events company but remained active in the opposition. In 2024, he was sentenced in absentia by a Belarus court to 12 years in prison for "extremist" activity and conspiracy to seize power.

Earlier this year, he learned he was also on a wanted list in Russia, the close ally of Belarus.

Anastasia said she did not know the purpose of his visit to Turkey, for which he took leave from his employer. There was nothing unusual in his behaviour before the trip, and he had a ticket to return three days later.

TRAIL LEADS TO BLACK SEA PORT OF TRABZON

Anastasia said she has been told by Turkish authorities that Kotau, on arrival in Istanbul, took another flight to the Black Sea port of Trabzon and boarded a private yacht that evening, heading for Sochi in southern Russia. She does not believe he would have gone there voluntarily, given his wanted status.

In response to inquiries by Reuters, the Istanbul prosecutor's office did not comment. The Trabzon prosecutor's office said it did not have a record of a file with Kotau's name. The police did not respond to a request for comment.

Russia's border guard service did not reply to Reuters when asked whether Kotau had entered the country.

Authorities in Belarus told Kotau's mother he was not in the country and reminded her of his conviction and 12-year sentence in absentia. The Belarusian foreign ministry did not respond to questions from Reuters about his disappearance.

On social media, pro-Lukashenko figures have gloated over the case, describing Kotau as a traitor and suggesting, without providing evidence, that he is now in prison.

Dmitry Bolkunets, an exiled Belarusian activist who knows Kotau, called him a key figure in an opposition campaign for Western countries to exert pressure on Lukashenko to win the release of prisoners. He told Reuters he believes that Kotau was most likely lured to Turkey and kidnapped. 

Franak Viacorka, a senior aide to exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, said the opposition was not satisfied with the information received from Turkey and believed that the Belarusian security service was implicated in the case.

"Definitely there is a KGB shadow, a KGB trace here."

Viacorka told Reuters that Tsikhanouskaya's team had flagged the case to European governments and the United States, whose envoy Coale was successful in persuading Lukashenko to free dozens of political prisoners earlier this year in return for a partial easing of U.S. sanctions.

Trump said earlier this month that Coale was working on the release of 50 more people he described as hostages.

No date has been announced for a new round of talks between Coale and Lukashenko. The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment on Kotau's case.

Anastasia, waiting for news while she carries on her own job and looks after the couple's two-year-old son, describes the situation as "horrible".

Lacking answers, she has wrestled with various dark scenarios: "Maybe some kind of blackmail... Maybe revenge. Perhaps some kind of personal vendetta."

But she believes her husband is still alive.

"I no longer care why he went to Turkey or what happened there," she said. "The main goal is to find him."

(Additional reporting by Ezgi Erkoyun and Jonathan Spicer in IstanbulEditing by Peter Graff)