FSB agents abducted ex-Belarusian official from yacht in Black Sea near Abkhazia

Anatoly Kotov, a former official from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's administration who defected to the opposition in 2020, disappeared in Turkey in August 2025. Investigators from the Belarusian Investigative Center, OCCRP, and Deutsche Welle have now established that FSB agents seized him from a yacht and handed him over at a Russian border security base in Abkhazia. Neither Turkish nor Polish authorities have launched a formal investigation.

Anatoly Kotov, a former Belarusian official who publicly condemned the violent crackdown on protesters in 2020 and subsequently defected to the opposition, was abducted by Russian FSB agents from a yacht in the Black Sea, an investigation by the Belarusian Investigative Center, OCCRP, and Deutsche Welle has revealed.

From Lukashenko's Orbit to Opposition

Kotov had a long career in Belarusian state structures, working at the Belarusian Embassy in Poland, the National Olympic Committee, and the Presidential Property Management Directorate. When mass protests erupted against Alexander Lukashenko in 2020, Kotov resigned and went public with his condemnation: «I cannot understand how, in the 21st century, in an absolutely European country, one could reach the point of killing unarmed citizens, mass beatings and torture, and not even try to apologise afterwards. For me, this is beyond any limit.»

After leaving state service, Kotov settled in Poland. He worked with the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation and other opposition structures, ran anonymous Telegram channels, and was linked to the channel "Nik i Mike," which at its peak had over 100,000 subscribers and regularly published insider information mocking Lukashenko. The channel's reach was significant enough that the deputy director of the Belarusian state news agency BELTA was sentenced to five years in prison in 2022 for leaking information to it. In 2024, Kotov was sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison in Belarus and placed on wanted lists in both Belarus and Russia.

The Yacht and the Trap

On 21 August 2025, Kotov flew from Poland to Turkey, boarded a yacht in the city of Trabzon, and was never seen again by friends or family. The vessel, a 30-metre motor yacht named Shells with four cabins, had a crew that did not speak Russian, was hired for a single voyage, and was dismissed immediately after it ended.

Investigators identified four other passengers aboard. Among them were Russian nationals Pyotr Grib, a former security services officer from Belarus who headed the security service of an ice arena in Sochi, and Yury Golovanov, whose financial ties to individuals in Kotov's orbit date back to 2015-2016. A Belarusian karate coach, Yury Puzikov, had been aboard but disembarked in Trabzon before Kotov arrived. The fourth passenger was Azerbaijani woman Kakhira Eynalova, who claimed to have had a romantic relationship with Kotov and had known him since at least 2023.

Seized at an FSB Base in Abkhazia

The yacht's registered destination was the Russian city of Sochi, but it instead headed for partially recognised Abkhazia. According to the Belarusian Investigative Center, on 22 August 2025, Grib and Golovanov directed the crew to sail to Ochamchira, where Russia's FSB border service maintains a base. A coast guard vessel with FSB border agents then approached the Shells, removed Kotov, and ordered the captain to struck his name from the passenger manifest.

The remaining passengers proceeded to Sukhumi, from where Grib and Golovanov travelled onward into Russia. Only Eynalova returned to Trabzon. Eynalova claimed the group had originally planned to visit a casino in Georgia, but that plans changed after everyone «got hammered», and that Kotov had been drunk and asleep when the FSB arrived. Grib and Golovanov reportedly summoned the coast guard on the pretext that Kotov had attacked and beaten them, a claim dismissed by those who knew him.

A Trail of Suspicious Connections

Six months after Kotov's disappearance, the yacht Shells was sold to a company registered in the Marshall Islands whose beneficiaries are undisclosed. It was subsequently renamed YS Legacy. Investigators noted that the initials "YS" correspond to the passport name of Yury Serykh, a former Belarusian KGB officer who worked alongside Kotov at the National Olympic Committee and later appeared with him at events of the sports club Vozrozhdeniye. Kotov had invited Serykh to his wedding as a friend. Serykh owns a Belarusian drone manufacturing company called BTS Global, where Puzikov, the passenger who left the yacht before Kotov boarded, previously worked. In March 2026, BTS Global filed a trademark application for "YS Legacy," matching the yacht's new name.

Authorities Reluctant to Investigate

Both Turkish and Polish authorities have declined to open formal investigations. Poland stated that the disappearance occurred in another country. Human rights activist and former Belarusian presidential candidate Ales Mikhalevich sharply criticised this position: «Not a single prosecutor, not a single civil servant wants extra work. If there were political will to open a criminal case into Anatoly Kotov's disappearance, it would be done quite easily.»

Mikhalevich also offered a chilling assessment of why Kotov was a target: «People like me are simply enemies to the regime, but people like him are traitors, which is far more serious.»

Kotov's friend Ruslan Khazin believes he is still alive: «If they wanted to eliminate him, it could have been done much more simply here, in Warsaw, staged as an accident. The circumstances of his disappearance suggest that the forces who took him needed him alive.»

Kotov's fate remains unknown. Russian and Belarusian law enforcement authorities deny having detained him.