What became known about the case of Anzhalika Melnikava a year after her disappearance

It became publicly known on March 28, 2028, that Anzhalika Melnikava, then speaker of the Coordination Council, had ceased to be in contact. This information was announced by Pavel Latushka, head of the National Anti-Crisis Management, whose team Melnikava had been a long-time member of. Colleagues noticed Anzhalika's disappearance three days earlier, on March 25. The three-day delay was later explained by a request from the Polish police not to rush with the announcement of this information.

Most of Anzhalika Melnikava's colleagues in the Coordination Council learned about her disappearance from the media. According to them, the speaker was last seen in person in Warsaw at the end of February. After that, she was only reachable remotely, via messengers, explaining her absence from meetings due to illness. One of Anzhalika Melnikava's last calls with colleagues was on March 21.

"I wrote to her on a messenger. She reassured me that she would resolve everything."

"I was probably the last person to speak with her," says operator Andrei in a conversation with Svaboda (the interviewee's name has been changed for safety. — RFE/RL). "At the end of March, I wrote to her about payment for filming. She replied that everything was in order. That she was preparing the papers and I would receive payment soon. And a few days later, we learned that Anzhalika had disappeared."

Andrei collaborated with Anzhalika Melnikava, Pavel Latushka, and several other Belarusian politicians in Warsaw. He says that his work for Melnikava could not be called regular, but he did shoot several videos with her participation. Payment was official, with a signed contract, no envelopes. Anzhalika usually settled payments within the specified timeframe.

"But here she said that she was preparing the transfer, that everything would be fine, that she was sick," Andrei recalls his last conversation with the disappeared speaker. "I wrote to her on a messenger. She reassured me that she would resolve everything. As far as I know, there were several of us like that at the time. We were waiting for payment from her, periodically asking about it."

At the time Andrei was corresponding with Anzhalika Melnikava regarding payment for work performed, she was no longer in the territory of the European Union.

Pavel Latushka announced this at the beginning of April, citing data from the Polish police. According to them, the speaker of the Coordination Council flew from Warsaw to London on February 26, 2025, and has not returned to the territory of the European Union since.

The operator never received payment for the work performed. According to Andrei, he knows at least four more people who were not paid due to Anzhalika Melnikava's disappearance. In reality, there could be many more.

"The prosecutor does not agree to release information"

The case of Anzhalika Melnikava's disappearance, who by February 2025 had already acquired Polish citizenship, was quickly transferred from the Warsaw police to the National Prosecutor's Office of Poland, with its Lublin branch taking over the investigation. As Polish experts told Svaboda at the time, transferring an investigation to a regional branch of the prosecutor's office is a common practice in Poland due to the department's workload. The very fact of transferring the case to the National Prosecutor's Office indicated the high level of attention Polish authorities paid to the disappearance of the Belarusian. However, for a year of investigation, almost no official information on its progress has been received from Polish law enforcement agencies.

"Despite the fact that I initiated the filing of a statement about Anzhalika Melnikava's disappearance with the Metropolitan Police Command in Warsaw, neither I nor our team is a party to this investigation," says Pavel Latushka in a comment for Svaboda.

"Therefore, we have limited opportunities to obtain information about the progress of the investigative actions. Nevertheless, I contacted the National Prosecutor's Office of Poland with a request for information and last week I again sent an inquiry to the prosecutor. According to the information available to me, Anzhalika Melnikava's whereabouts are currently undetermined. This, of course, cannot leave us, her colleagues, indifferent in this situation."

In response to Svaboda's inquiry to the Lublin branch of the Polish prosecutor's office, they replied that the investigation is ongoing, but the decision to disclose any information about its progress can only be made by the National Prosecutor's Office. There, after a few days' pause, they reported that information about the investigation into Anzhalika Melnikava's case cannot be disclosed yet.

"In the interests of the investigation and the adopted investigative directions, the prosecutor handling the case does not agree to provide information about the current results of the case," Katarzyna Celiuv-Yashevskaya, a representative of the National Prosecutor's Office of Poland, informed Svaboda.

In late spring and summer 2025, several unofficial versions of Anzhalika Melnikava's disappearance emerged. These ranged from abduction by Belarusian special services to a deliberate departure from Warsaw with her children due to a romance with an active KGB officer of Belarus. None of the versions voiced by journalists or former special service employees have yet received definite confirmation.

"During this period, we received various types of information," Pavel Latushka continues. "Including the widely known media reports that special services allegedly used a so-called 'honey trap' against her, and about her possible liquidation due to a task she was given that could have posed a threat to the life and health of colleagues in the National Anti-Crisis Management. And also that someone supposedly saw her in Belarus. None of the versions are definitive. The largest amount of information is likely held by Polish special services, and, we can assume, by Belarusian special services as well."

In addition to Polish special services and Belarusian journalists, representatives of the "Cyberpartisans" community also took up the investigation into Anzhalika Melnikava's disappearance in the spring of 2025. The speaker of the Coordination Council was simultaneously involved in administering the Białoruś Liberty fund, through which the expenses of the "Cyberpartisans" and the Coordination Council were partially financed.

In mid-May, representatives of the community announced that they had regained control over the fund's accounts, from which 150,000 dollars had disappeared. Approximately 30,000 of them were allocated for activities related to the "Cyberpartisans" initiative. The rest was planned to be spent on the needs of the Coordination Council.

According to information released in May 2025, all funds from the Białoruś Liberty fund account were withdrawn, with the last transaction occurring on March 24, 2025. The "Cyberpartisans" investigation continues.

On February 20, 2026, Yulyana Shametavets, a representative of the organization, told Svaboda that on March 24, 2025, Anzhalika Melnikava (or someone else with access to the Białoruś Liberty fund account) transferred the last approximately 150,000 zlotys from an account in a Polish bank to the account of the Lithuanian crypto exchange UAB Onlychain Fintech Limited.

This is a relatively small Lithuanian fintech company with 12 employees, registered in December 2021. Svaboda sent an inquiry to UAB Onlychain Fintech Limited regarding the further fate of the funds transferred there by Anzhalika Melnikava. We did not receive a response at the time of publication.

"Ordinary money from a bank account in the European Union can be converted into cryptocurrency to be conveniently and quickly used anywhere in the world, including Belarus," explains an employee of a Belarusian IT company who uses cryptocurrency exchange services himself, speaking to Svaboda on condition of anonymity. "Lithuanian, because a Polish bank would not suspect anything. Everything happens as if within the territory of the European Union. And after that, you can do whatever you want with this money, if you act smartly. Of course, European special services can track where the money went, where it was withdrawn. But no more than that."

Shortly after Anzhalika Melnikava's disappearance, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita published an article mentioning another fact related to the activities of the former speaker of the Coordination Council. According to the publication, in 2023, the Białoruś Liberty fund, headed by Melnikava, received 405,000 zlotys (approximately 100,000 euros. — RFE/RL) from Media Consulting Services Ltd., a company registered in Great Britain.

"It will be hard for me to believe that she was an agent"

Another person who actively joined the search for Anzhalika Melnikava in the first days after her disappearance was Aliaksei Liavonchyk, co-founder of the BySol and By_help funds, who permanently lives in London. Aliaksei filed a statement about Melnikava's disappearance with the British police (the reason for this was her flight from Warsaw to London) and announced a collection of 10,000 euros, which he promised to pay to anyone who would share information about the fate of the disappeared speaker of the Coordination Council. The British police soon replied that they would not deal with the case of a Belarusian with Polish citizenship disappearing. However, those eager to receive the reward were found quite quickly. The truth is, it almost immediately became clear that they had no accurate information about Melnikava's disappearance or her current whereabouts.

"There is no new information," says Aliaksei Liavonchyk in a conversation with Svaboda about what he himself knows about Melnikava's fate a year after her departure from Warsaw. "What we knew, that's how it remained. Those who wrote to me claiming to have a video of Melnikava filmed in Belarus eventually sent me a 4-second clip. I replied that it was impossible to verify anything based on it. I asked for the full video. But I received nothing, and those people disappeared."

According to Aliaksei, the same people in correspondence promised to publish a video with Anzhalika Melnikava filmed in Belarus. But this ultimately never happened.

"The 10,000 is still sitting there," Aliaksei says. "But soon we will have a decision point, we must decide whether to use this money to support political prisoners. I am leaning towards that option; these funds cannot be held for so long."

Despite everything that has become known about Anzhalika Melnikava's case a year after her disappearance, Pavel Latushka is not inclined to draw unequivocal conclusions. He points out that during her work in the Coordination Council, Melnikava always maintained a clear and unambiguous position regarding Aliaksandr Lukashenka's policies. And it was thanks to her actions in January 2025 that the Polish Senate decided to recognize the Coordination Council as the Belarusian parliament in exile.

Pavel Latushka adds that Anzhalika Melnikava, holding the position of speaker of the Coordination Council, took on part of the expenses for its activities, and in January 2025, she spoke at a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, where she supported the adoption of a PACE resolution on the non-recognition of Lukashenka as president following the 2025 elections, which can be considered strong blows to the state system of Belarus.

"Given that Anzhalika Melnikava headed the 'Cyberpartisans' foundation, I am convinced that she passed the appropriate vetting by this highly reputable organization," says Pavel Latushka. "At the same time, she was a citizen of Poland and also underwent vetting by all relevant special services."

Even if Anzhalika Melnikava is shown to us alive and well in the near future and she makes a certain statement, it will be difficult for me to believe that she was a deeply conspiratorial agent embedded in the structures of Belarus's democratic forces. It cannot be ruled out that she might have been coerced into cooperation in the last months before her disappearance. Her activities caused too much damage to the regime of Belarus, and also to Russia."

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