Alina Kharisova, a member of Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s team, spent a year passing confidential information to the Committee for State Security (KGB) of Belarus, believing she was collaborating with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The incident came to light on Thursday during a broadcast on Belarusian state television. Operating under the pseudonym «Alexa,» the informant had even recorded a video message confirming the start of her cooperation with the allegedly Ukrainian handlers.
According to the disclosed information, Kharisova was part of Tsikhanouskaya’s inner circle, which granted her access to classified data regarding the activities of opposition structures. As part of her «cooperation» with an individual posing as an SBU officer, she regularly leaked operational data.
However, the television investigation revealed that all communications had been controlled by Belarusian intelligence services from the very beginning. The video recording Kharisova made for cover ended up becoming one of the central pieces of evidence in the state TV exposé.
Analysts are linking the timing of the KGB agent’s exposure to the recent surge in contact between Kyiv and the Belarusian opposition. The materials were published just days after an official meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
Experts suggest an additional trigger may have been a statement by Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. Just hours before the TV broadcast, Podolyak sharply advised Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to «keep quiet» if he wanted to «live to see his retirement.» Consequently, the swift exposure of the KGB’s year-long infiltration into opposition structures appears to be Minsk’s calculated media and political retaliation against Kyiv’s rhetoric.