DW investigative report on disappeared Belarusian dissident

Numerous pieces of evidence suggest that the Belarusian secret service may have played a role in the operation in the Black Sea. The investigative research was conducted by Deutsche Welle, the Belarusian Investigative Centre and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

The former Belarusian sports official and opposition activist Anatol Kotau disappeared without a trace in Turkey on 21 August 2025. Using information from various sources, including documents, satellite imagery and leaked databases, DW and its partners have reconstructed the events as far as possible. The monthslong investigation found that Kotau was likely taken from a yacht by the Russian Coast Guard – a division of the FSB domestic intelligence agency – a yacht he had boarded in the Turkish port city of Trabzon. He was in the company of someone he knew. 

DW and its partners were able to trace numerous links, via the yacht that Kotau had boarded in Trabzon, to Belarusian individuals and companies with close ties to the Belarusian secret service, the KGB.  According to sources familiar with the events, the yacht headed for waters off the coast of Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia with close ties to Russia, where the Russian coastguard reportedly took him off the vessel. 

Throughout his career, Anatol Kotau initially worked for the regime of authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko: first as a diplomat at the Belarusian embassy in Poland and, from 2015, as secretary-general of the Belarusian Olympic Committee. However, he resigned from his post after government forces cracked down on protests over fraud in the 2020 presidential election. He fled to Poland, where he registered as a refugee and, from Warsaw, began campaigning for change in Belarus.