Anatoly Kotov, a former official from Belarus’s presidential property management department, disappeared in August 2025 after traveling to Turkey. A joint investigation by the Belarusian Investigative Center, OCCRP, and Deutsche Welle, as recounted by Meduza, points to possible involvement by officers of Russia’s FSB.
Kotov had worked at the Belarusian embassy in Poland, the National Olympic Committee, and presidential administrative structures. In 2020, during protests against Alexander Lukashenko, he left public service and publicly condemned violence against demonstrators. He later lived in Poland, cooperated with opposition initiatives, and was reportedly linked to the Telegram channel “Nick and Mike.” In 2024, a Belarusian court sentenced him in absentia to 12 years in prison, and both Belarus and Russia placed him on a wanted list.
On August 21, 2025, Kotov flew from Poland to Turkey and boarded the yacht Shells in Trabzon. His relatives and friends did not see him again. Investigators say the crew of the 30-meter yacht had been hired for that single trip and dismissed immediately afterward. Besides Kotov, the listed passengers were Yury Puzikov, Pyotr Grib, Yury Golovanov, and Kakhira Eynalova, although Puzikov left before the vessel sailed.
The yacht was officially supposed to head to Sochi, but instead it moved toward partially recognized Abkhazia. According to the BIC, on August 22 Grib and Golovanov told the crew to steer for Ochamchira, where an FSB border service base is located. There, a coast guard vessel approached the yacht and, the report says, FSB border officers took Kotov away and ordered the captain to remove his name from the passenger list. The other passengers remained aboard; later, the two men disembarked in Sukhumi and went on to Russia, while only Eynalova returned to Trabzon.
Major questions remain unanswered. It is still unclear why Kotov traveled to Turkey, whether he knew the yacht’s route, and which of the passengers he knew well. Eynalova said he was drunk, while the BIC reported that the coast guard may have been called under the pretext that he had attacked the others. Kotov’s acquaintances reject the claim that he was prone to violence.
Investigators also drew attention to the yacht’s later sale. Six months after Kotov vanished, it was sold to a Marshall Islands-registered company and renamed YS Legacy. The BIC noted that the initials match those of Yury Serykh, a former Belarusian KGB officer and acquaintance of Kotov. In March 2026, Serykh’s company BTS Global applied to register the same trademark.
“If there had been political will to open a criminal case over Anatoly Kotov’s disappearance, it could have been done quite easily,” rights defender Ales Mikhalevich said.
Turkish authorities did not answer journalists’ questions about any investigation, while Polish authorities said they were not handling the case because the disappearance happened abroad. Kotov’s whereabouts remain unknown.