section_path: Presidency/Political repression/Assassination plans on dissidents abroad
section_name: Assassination plans on dissidents abroad
paragraph_text: Assassination plans on dissidents abroad
  
  On 4 January 2021, the EU Observer reported that new evidence, including documents and audio recordings, provide that Belarusian secret services planned to murder dissidents abroad. An audio file, allegedly being a recording from a bugged meeting in 2012, reveals Vadim Zaitsev, the KGB chairman at the time, discussing the murder plot with two officers from the KGB's Alpha Group, an elite counter-terrorism unit. Translated from Russian, one of the voices in the recording says, "We should be working with Sheremet, who is a massive pain in the arse. We'll plant and so on and this fucking rat will be taken down in fucking pieces, legs in one direction, arms in the other direction. If everything natural causes, it won't get into people's minds the same way." In addition to planting a bomb, they also discuss poisoning Sheremet.