Radio Minsk presenters Alyona Rodovskaya and Kirill Kazakov discussed the insidiousness of the Belarusian opposition and its alleged covert activity during the then-upcoming election campaign, with an employee of "SB. Belarus Today" newspaper Andrei Mukovozchik on November 27, 2024.
"There will be no real popular outrage. We knocked this weapon out of their hands. What can they do now? They may poison the water supply like they did in the summer of 2020. I'll bet you anything, there was a poisoning. This is not the time and place to dig up (all the proof). There was an investigation, the perpetrators were probably found and punished. But it was done specifically to show that we can manage without this government ourselves. That's what it was about," explained Mukovozchik.
This refers to the events of June 2020, when in five districts of Minsk, instead of normal tap water, a cloudy liquid with an unpleasant smell and taste was flowing from the faucets. Several residents of the capital were hospitalized after consuming this water. The water treatment facility failed to meet the increased demand for clean water, so Minsk residents took matters into their own hands: they purchased and distributed bottled water, collected water from nearby springs, and sought help on social media. Volunteers were transporting water en masse to the affected areas.
The Investigative Committee of Belarus opened a criminal case and spent two years searching for the cause of this incident to determine who was responsible for the water contamination. It turned out, that this incident was connected to pipeline repairs that had started a month prior. Part of the pipeline undergoing repairs was out of operation which caused the water to stagnate, turning it murky and stale. After the repairs, it was not drained and fed into the pipeline instead, and the treatment plant failed to handle that level of contamination. As a result, bad water infiltrated the city's water supply.
The Investigative Committee called the incident the result of negligence. Not a word about the opposition.
