Several Kurapaty defenders detained

Zmicier Dashkevich, Yahor Laurukhin and Valery Mints were detained on the morning of 29 June when they were trasnporting new crosses for the Kurapaty memorial on a truck. They planned to mount the crosses neat the Poyedem-Poyedim restaurant next to the Kurapaty memorial where thousands of people were executed by Stalin's police in the 1930s. "They were detained by tough-looking men," Eduard Parlchys wrote on social media.

Other reports suggested that in the morning police were trying to enter the house of yet another regular Kurapaty defender Volha Mikalaychyk.

Today, the presidents of Germany and Austria will attend a memorial service at the former Nazi concentration camp Trascianiec near Minsk. Belarus President will also be there. After the ceremony, the German and Austrian president are expected to visit the Kurapaty memorial. This can possibly explain why the police carried out the preventive detentions of the activists who are protesting against the launch of a restaurant next to the memorial to the victims of Stalin's repressions.