OREANDA-NEWS. Former Deputy State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus, Andrei Vtyurin, was detained for activities in the interests of the FSB and the Federal Security Service of Russia, the Russian newspaper said, citing a source in the Belarusian security forces. According to him, Vtyurin regularly conveyed certain information to these organizations. “He is not a spy in the usual sense, his connections are inherited from the past,” the agency’s source said, explaining that Vtyurin had many contacts and friends in the special services of this country because of his studies in Russia.

“In a situation where there is a big conflict between Moscow and Minsk, such behavior is unacceptable for a person from the inner circle [of President of Belarus Alexander] Lukashenko,” the source added. Another source told the Russian media that for the past 25 years, Vtyurin had been in Lukashenko’s closest circle of contacts and was in the family of the Belarusian leader. “To the point that the younger son of the president, Kolya, literally grew in the hands of my father’s guard,” said the source. He also doubted that such a high-ranking official could really begin to pursue because of a bribe of 150 thousand dollars, since, according to him, in such level circles, the calculations with such amounts are the norm.

On May 1, the official Minsk promulgated a decree issued by Lukashenko on April 24, by which the President of Belarus dismissed Vyurin from the post of Under-Secretary of the Security Council of the Republic for "committing acts that would discredit the title of serviceman." The day before, Nasha Niva reported that the KGB officers detained a security official for a bribe on a large scale (according to Belarusian News, it’s about $ 150,000), and later Vutyur’s relatives confirmed information about his criminal prosecution against TUT.BY .