former security officials reveal new facts about Russians who support Belarus.

The authors of the investigation analyzed the data of athletes who previously had Russian citizenship and noticed a strange pattern: many of them had two different Belarusian passports at the same time.

As the investigators found out, the procedure for obtaining the first document was carried out with gross violations of the law. Instead of the several months of consideration stipulated by law, passports were issued on the oral instructions of the Lukashenko Administration in literally a day or two.

This was done in order to urgently enter athletes for competitions. In fact, as noted in the material, citizens of Russia with illegally issued documents, which were later canceled for the passage of a legal citizenship procedure, played for Belarus.

Special attention in the investigation is paid to biathlon, a strategically important sport for the regime, which is under the close control of the KGB. It is from this sport that the special services often select snipers and instructors for the Alpha special unit. The Biathlon Federation has traditionally been headed by state security officials. According to the investigators, they were the ones who supervised the selection of Russian biathletes who did not make it into their national team.

As a striking example, the video shows the story of Olga Kudryashova, born in Tatarstan in 1978.

As the investigators found out, she received her first Belarusian passport on September 12, 2006. At the same time, the document contained false information: the personal number indicated that she was a native of Belarus (the letters RB), although her place of birth was listed as Russia.

Павялічыць

Olga Kudryashova in the 7.5 km sprint at the Biathlon World Cup stage. December 11, 2009. Hochfilzen, Austria. Photo: Lars Baron / Bongarts / Getty Images

It was with this passport that Kudryashova won gold and bronze at the European Championships in Bulgaria in 2007.

As the investigators found out, four months after receiving her first passport, the athlete began to draw up documents for residence. On January 31, 2007, she received a residence permit in Belarus, and only seven months later, on August 7, having fulfilled all the legal requirements, she received her second Belarusian passport.

This new document had a completely different personal number, which contained the letters “VF”, which are assigned specifically to natives of other countries. Since the first passport was not recognized as invalid until 2012, it turns out that for four and a half years the athlete had two valid passports at the same time.

In addition to sports machinations, the authors of the investigation revealed the athlete’s connections with the special services. According to the investigators, Kudryashova married Pavel Streltsov, an employee of the central apparatus of the KGB. Moreover, in 2011 she received a cover passport with a different surname – Popova, which she replaced with a new one in 2021, which indicates the continuation of her cooperation with the security forces.

The investigators plan to transfer all the collected information about the illegal participation of athletes in competitions to the International Biathlon Union to conduct an audit of the legality of the investigation’s heroine’s participation in international competitions.