Threatened servicemen with outing them as homosexuals to extort secrets and sell them to Ukraine. This is why the odious BRSM functionary received 17 years in prison
17 years of imprisonment – this is the sentence handed down to Uladzimir Tsukhay – a "yabatska" (pro-regime supporter) with a pedophilic past. A person who until recently showed himself as an ardent defender of the regime and assisted law enforcement, is now convicted of treason against the state, specifically for the benefit of Ukraine. The case was handled by the KGB and is classified. The trial began in June 2024, but the outcome has only just become known.
Uladzimir Tsukhay. ONT screenshot
How did it happen that a person who was part of the system and served it received one of the harshest sentences?
Human rights activist and former political prisoner Uladzimir Labkovich spent several months with Tsukhay in the same cell in Mahilioŭ prison No. 4.
"I have never met such odious people in my life. But this is probably the case where the passenger's inadequacy was beyond measure even for his 'own'," notes Labkovich.
"Belarusian Red Guard"
Before his arrest, Uladzimir Tsukhay was a man of the system. He worked in the BRSM (Belarusian Republican Youth Union) and was among the leadership of the pro-Lukashenka Communist Party.
Labkovich recalls how Tsukhay previously participated in filling courtrooms to prevent observers and relatives of political prisoners from entering.
"There he knocked down a relative of political prisoner Aliaksandr Barazenka so that she couldn't enter the courtroom. I called him a moral degenerate then. In the cell, he himself maliciously told me: 'I noticed you even then.' To be honest, I didn't even remember him. But, it means, I wasn't mistaken at first glance."
In 2020, Tsukhay led BRSM squads that disrupted courtyard gatherings, provoked signature collectors for alternative presidential candidates, and handed people over to law enforcement. Some representatives of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's team later faced criminal charges due to his actions.
According to Uladzimir Labkovich, in the cell, Tsukhay openly named Benito Mussolini as his ideal. He recounted how, during one of the pro-government rallies in 2020, he ecstatically knelt and forced others to pray for the police. He boasted about participating in staged events: playing the role of an ordinary worker at enterprises during Lukashenka's visits, including at MAZ (Minsk Automobile Plant).
"He openly said: most of the people on camera are staged. Like him. From BRSM, from party structures. Those who, on signal, become a local resident of an agro-town or an enterprise worker," recalls Uladzimir Labkovich.
Uladzimir Tsukhay. Photo: pristalica.by
Tsukhay also boasted about how he and his associates laundered budget money allocated for "patriotic work."
"He flaunted it," notes Uladzimir Labkovich.
According to Tsukhay's stories, party structures created their own firms, received state orders for propaganda products, produced a minimum, and divided the remaining money among themselves.
He was the director of the publishing house "ViAlVi", which gave him the opportunity to implement such schemes.
Blackmailing Servicemen
The unexpected turn in the communist's story occurred after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022.
According to Labkovich, Tsukhay claimed to have compromising information about some Belarusian servicemen from the General Staff and the apparatus of the Ministry of Defense of Belarus, specifically that they were homosexuals. He tried to blackmail them to obtain secret information that could be of interest to Ukraine.
"He began to blackmail these servicemen to make them hand over secret information to him, which could then be sold to Ukraine. As I understood it, his interest was purely commercial. He thought he could make money that way. He had no ideological or value-based motives," Labkovich believes.
The human rights activist says that Tsukhay even once showed him a fragment of correspondence with the KGB where these episodes were mentioned.
The servicemen reported the blackmail to the special services. This is how the criminal case began. The result – a closed trial, an accusation of treason against the state, and 17 years of imprisonment.
Tsukhay's case is completely classified. At the same time, the human rights activist adds, Tsukhay has a number of chronic illnesses, but due to the secrecy of the case, even his medical record is unavailable to the prison administration. And this, in his opinion, is a separate problem: regardless of one's actions, a person has the right to medical assistance.
How Tsukhay Was Isolated in the Cell
In prison, Tsukhay ended up in the same cell with Labkovich and several other prisoners.
According to the interlocutor, he couldn't keep silent at all. "He couldn't go a second without speaking," the human rights activist recalls.
"He talked a lot about an alleged conspiracy of officials against Lukashenka. According to his version, in 2020, officials 'saved the regime,' but after that, power definitively shifted to law enforcement. The main support became people in uniform, while various officials and ideological employees, he said, were pushed into the background. He believed they were not given the share of influence they deserved. Tsukhay claimed that he himself came under persecution allegedly due to conversations in official circles," says Uladzimir Labkovich. "But what was true and what was false there, I don't know. He is a very vague and murky person who liked to appear more significant than he actually was."
At the same time, according to the interlocutor, Tsukhay signed many non-disclosure agreements, but could not restrain himself. In the cell, he himself revealed what he had promised to keep secret. And at the same time, he was very afraid. Primarily of political prisoners. He understood that people received sentences due to his denunciations.
"He was in Shkloŭ's 17th penal colony for some time, and in the neighboring squad there was a man who ended up behind bars thanks to him," says Labkovich.
Tsukhay's status in the cell changed after a conversation about children. According to Labkovich, Tsukhay voiced the idea of "taking children from political dissidents" and raising them in special camps, so that "they would grow up to be like him."
He allegedly even prepared a draft law and intended to send it somewhere.
In the prison hierarchy, threats to children are an absolute taboo. The cell decided: Tsukhay was "isolated." He was forbidden to sit at the common table, eat with everyone, and people stopped talking to him.
When the threat to take children was voiced once more, this time towards an ordinary criminal inmate, the conflict ended quickly. "Tsukhay just got hit in the head and flew across the entire cell into the designated corner," says Labkovich.
"He was very afraid that political prisoners would take revenge on him. But in the end, he didn't get it from them," he adds.
Tsukhay's "isolation" in the cell is not the same as having a "low status." In fact, he was simply ignored in the cell, but upon moving to a new cell, he could re-establish communication with other inmates on equal terms.
Tsukhay's pedophilic background is known. In 2013, Zhoda (Zhodzina) pedophile hunters caught him using a decoy when they corresponded on behalf of a 15-year-old boy who invited the BRSM functionary for a "hot night." At the meeting, Tsukhay was found with intimate lubricant and condoms. However, no one in prison knew about this.
"And now I understand why he was so afraid of his past, because if it had surfaced in prison, he would have simply been torn to pieces," Uladzimir Labkovich is convinced.
Raised in Hostility
Tsukhay's mother, according to Labkovich, repeatedly came to the prison and demanded that her son not be harmed. She is also an odious figure: she worked in propaganda media and was associated with the Communist Party. Tsukhay himself often cited her as an example and justification for his own views.
He recounted that in January 1991, his mother was in Vilnius as a Soviet journalist – during the days when Lithuanians defended their independence. And she allegedly feared her entire life that she would be "caught by Lithuanian nationalists." This fear, these stories about a hostile West and betrayal, he said, were heard in their home from childhood.
"He was raised in this hatred practically from birth," says Labkovich.
Tsukhay emphatically repeated about his mother's influence and her principled stance. And at the same time, he asserted: if she suddenly "betrayed the regime" or abandoned communist ideals, he would disown her without hesitation.
"He is a fanatic. In his views – a true fascist," Uladzimir Labkovich concluded.