"Zerkalo": The Missing Melnikova Traveled Three Countries While Telling Her Colleagues She Was Sick
- 10.05.2025, 22:13
During this time, the money allocated for the "coordinating council" disappeared.
The missing speaker of the so-called "coordinating council" of Belarus Anzhelika Melnikova misled her colleagues for unknown reasons that she was in Poland. In the meantime, she visited the UK, Sri Lanka and the UAE. As "Mirror" writes, this was found out by the authors of The Insider and Polityka investigation with the participation of Sunday Times journalists in Sri Lanka.
Melnikova explained her absence from the office by complications after a covida. In fact, she left Warsaw for London on February 26 this year and disappeared after that, investigators claim. According to their data, after the UK, Melnikova traveled to Sri Lanka with her two daughters, Anna and Tatiana, before flying to Dubai.
It is claimed that on February 25, the day before flying to London, Melnikova booked a stay at the five-star Araliya Beach Resort & Spa in Unawatuna, Sri Lanka.
"This may indicate either the spontaneity of the decision, or the desire to hide the itinerary in advance," the journalists believe.
Their information is that the booking was made not through popular services, but through a small travel firm, working in Sri Lanka for 17 years and designed primarily for Russian-speaking tourists. All the time on the trip, Melnikova used a Polish passport (the number starts with FG6...), obtained recently - she became a Polish citizen at the end of 2024. The children also traveled on Polish passports.
On February 28, as the authors of the investigation were able to confirm, Melnikova and her daughters arrived in Sri Lanka. They stayed in a hotel until March 7. According to sources, during this period, one large transfer was made from the fund she managed - it was money from a grant intended for the Belarusan opposition. Melnikova had sole access to them.
Investigators found out earlier that Melnikova told her friend about her engagement to a man living in Belarus, who can't come to the EU countries, so they meet in exotic countries, particularly in Sri Lanka. She did not tell her colleagues on the "coordinating council" anything about the engagement. During one of their joint trips to Sri Lanka with this man last January, Melnikova also stayed at the Araliya Beach Resort & Spa in Unawatuna, The Insider and Polityka found out.
The journalists reported that on March 7, 2025, Melnikova and her daughters left Sri Lanka and flew to Dubai on a Fly Dubai flight. This was her third visit to the UAE since the beginning of last year, as she also traveled via Dubai in July 2024. Her fate and motives for her actions are still unknown. A source in Melnikova's inner circle told The Insider and Polityka that she has been very upset about something in recent months, even having nervous breakdowns.
Not even her closest colleagues in the opposition knew what was really going on with Melnikova. At the time she finally left Warsaw, she told them that she was sick at home, contacted them via Zoom and promised to return to the office soon. She answered messages, but later the responses became so strange that her colleagues suspected that perhaps she was no longer in control of her phone. A month after her disappearance, the case was referred to the police. Later it became known that Melnikova's ex-husband, with whom she had recently started living together again, packed up their apartment from March 1 to March 2 and left Poland on March 3. Relatives of Angelika Melnikova assured The Insider and Polityka that he is currently in Belarus.
April 7, Andrei Melnikov, Angelika's ex-husband, confirmed that he and his children are in Belarus.
March 30, Zerkalo readers reported that they saw Melnikova's ex-husband together with their daughters in Niasvizh.