How a Belarusian Dissident Vanished at Sea

As he stepped off the flight to Istanbul on August 21, 2025, the forty-something bearded man in a brown T-shirt blended in easily with his fellow travelers. “Landed,” he texted his wife, who responded with a heart emoji.

A few hours later, the man arrived to the seaside resort of Trabzon, on Turkey’s northeastern Black Sea coast, and headed for the city’s marina.  

It was there that the last known image of Anatol Kotau was captured at 6:35 p.m. as he passed through the port’s border control. In the photograph, Kotau looks up at the camera, a blank expression on his face.  

Kotau was no ordinary tourist. He is a Belarusian official-turned-dissident who had fled his country’s autocratic regime and taken refuge in neighboring Poland. He was actively wanted in Belarus, Russia, and several other former Soviet allies for what Belarusian authorities deemed to be “anti-state” activity. 

He never returned home from the trip to Turkey. His whereabouts — and whether he is still alive — have been a mystery ever since.  

But a joint investigation by the Belarusian Investigative Center (BIC), Deutsche Welle, and OCCRP has now uncovered new details about the dissident’s disappearance. 

Reporters drew on police documents, corporate records, surveillance footage, passenger manifests, border records, satellite imagery, social media posts, and interviews to reconstruct Kotau’s final hours aboard a pleasure yacht in the Black Sea. 

The investigation reveals that the yacht carrying Kotau and three other passengers was likely intercepted off the coast of Abkhazia, the Moscow-backed breakaway Georgian region that is home to a large Russian military presence.

Sources familiar with the incident told reporters Kotau was taken from the yacht onto a patrol boat. While OCCRP could not independently confirm what happened at sea, satellite imagery obtained by reporters shows what appears to be a Russian coast guard boat leaving a base in the vicinity used by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) shortly before the sources said the interception took place.

Russia's coast guard is part of the FSB, the country's powerful domestic spying agency.

The passenger manifest reveals the identities of those who sailed on the yacht alongside Kotau that day. They include two Russian men — one of them a local city functionary in the ruling United Russia party  — who subsequently disembarked in Abkhazia instead of returning to Turkey with others aboard the boat.

Records also show that just before Kotau boarded the vessel in Trabzon, another Belarusian man stepped off it. The man was previously employed by a company owned by a member of Belarus’ State Security Committee, the national intelligence agency that goes by the acronym of its Soviet-era predecessor, KGB.  

That ex-KGB member also has a personal history with Kotau, reporters found. He was described as a “friend” on the guest list of Kotau’s planned wedding celebration in 2020, and the pair had been photographed together in Belarus on multiple occasions, emails and social media posts show. 

Many questions about the events of the day remain unanswered, including whether Kotau was aware that these other passengers would be sailing on the yacht, what he knew about them, and why he was in their company.

While OCCRP could not confirm what if any role these individuals might have had in his disappearance, the findings raise questions of whether their backgrounds were more than coincidence.

After Kotau vanished, Belarusian officials said he was not in their custody, while Russia’s FSB has also denied knowledge of his whereabouts.

The Belarusian government, the Russian FSB, and the other passengers identified by reporters did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Rising Official To Regime Opponent

Kotau, now 47, rose steadily within the Belarusian government after graduating from a prestigious university in Moscow for diplomats that is heavily attended by students from former Soviet countries.

He began his career at the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, before moving to the embassy in Warsaw and then taking a role with the presidential administration back in Minsk. In 2015, he was appointed Secretary General of the National Olympic Committee, headed by President Aleksander Lukashenko himself.

But then Kotau’s trajectory shifted. After a short stint in the private sector, he worked at the  presidential administration’s Property Management Directorate headed by Viktor Sheiman, a close Lukashenko ally sanctioned by the EU and U.S. over his alleged role in disappearances of political opponents in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Less than two weeks after Lukashenko’s disputed victory in an August 2020 presidential election, which was followed by a violent government crackdown on protesters, Kotau submitted his resignation to Sheiman. In a media interview shortly after he said: “I'm not prepared to work for a team that denies or minimizes the unfortunately deplorable events that took place after the elections — all those murders and torture.”

“Even a single victim [is] unacceptable in the 21st century for a country that calls itself European,” he said. 

Like many other dissidents, Kotau decamped to Poland and received refugee status there. From there, he continued to voice criticism of the regime, including over its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Most notably, Kotau ran a Telegram channel that published insider information from government agencies and details of Lukashenko's personal life and movements.  

In 2024, a Belarusian court convicted him in absentia on charges including “extremism” and “conspiracy” against the government, sentencing him to 12 years in prison. He was also added to Russia’s interstate wanted list.

"Without a doubt, [Kotau] was a person the Belarusian authorities wanted to get back, legally or illegally," Ales Michalevic, a Belarusian lawyer and a former presidential candidate, told BIC. 

"People like me, for example, are simply enemies for the regime, whereas people like him are traitors. And that is much more serious for the regime,” he added.

Yet, despite his status as a wanted man, Kotau’s friends said he often hinted that he maintained contacts with high-level officials within the Belarusian government, and that he could be secretive about his travel plans. Shortly before the trip to Turkey, Kotau told multiple people in the exile community that they would soon be able to return home. 

Ruslan Khazin, one of Kotau’s friends, told BIC that he "just didn't understand” why he would say this. When he asked him outright, Kotau, who had this “unusual manner,” just smiled and said, “'Well, you'll find out later.'”

The Other Passengers

On the morning of August 21, 2025, a 30-meter pleasure yacht with four bedrooms and an on-deck jacuzzi sailed into Trabzon’s marina under a British flag. According to a passenger manifest, the boat, named the Shells, was carrying crew members and three passengers. 

This was the yacht Kotau would board later that day, though those close to him said they had no information about the reasons for his trip. Who organized the yacht outing — and ultimately orchestrated his removal from the boat — remains unknown. 

However, reporters searched leaked employment and border data to identify the backgrounds of other passengers on the ship that day, and found that two had previously been employed by a Russian politician and former Belarusian state security employees, respectively.  

One of these passengers, a Belarusian man named Yury Puzikau, disembarked from the boat in Trabzon shortly before Kotau boarded.  

According to leaked employment records obtained by BIC, Puzikau previously worked for three private entities founded or operated by ex-members of the Belarusian KGB.  

The records do not indicate that Puzikau himself was an intelligence officer or that his travel to Turkey was connected to state security. The leaked data only shows he received a salary from these firms, without any information about his role.

However, one of his previous employers in Belarus, BTS Global, has contracts with the Belarusian government, and produced drones showcased at Belarus’s 2025 military live-fire war drills with Russia. (The company did not respond to requests to comment.)

Yury Serykh, the former Belarusian KGB member who founded BTS Global — and either owned or founded Puzikau’s other former employers — also has a history with Kotau himself.  

The pair can be seen together in multiple photographs posted on social media in 2019 by the sports club Vozrozhdenie (“Revival”), where Serykh served as an executive, and where Puzikau was also previously employed.

Emails provided to  BIC by a source show that Serykh had been invited to a planned wedding celebration for Kotau and his wife before they fled Belarus in 2020, and was described on the guest list as a “friend.” 

The emails also include records of Kotau soliciting a donation from Serykh the previous year  for a sports organization.

The men appear to have overlapped professionally as well. Both Serykh and his wife worked for the Belarusian National Olympic Committee when Kotau headed the organization as Secretary General in 2015, according to leaked employment records and archived versions of the committee’s official website. 

Neither Puzikau nor Serykh responded to requests to comment about their relationship with Kotau or the events on the yacht that day. 

After Puzikau disembarked, two Russian passengers remained on board alongside the crew for the trip that Kotau would eventually join. Those passengers, Pyotr Grib and Yury Golovanov, had traveled together from Moscow to Istanbul two weeks earlier, according to leaked border records. 

Grib previously served as an assistant for several years to a Belarus-born municipal lawmaker from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party in the southern resort city of Sochi. 

The Sochi legislature has highlighted Grib’s work distributing supplies to local men fighting in Russia’s war on Ukraine, and an official publication in February identified him as the head of the city’s local council on urban improvements. 

The other Russian passenger, Golovanov, maintains a sparse public profile, but leaked employment records show he previously worked as head of human resources for a firm that managed transport logistics for government and corporate events in St. Petersburg.

The exact nature of the relationship between Kotau and these other passengers remains unclear. Grib and Golovanov didn’t respond to requests for comment regarding their travel to Trabzon or their relationship to Kotau.  

Interception at sea 

Passenger manifests and port cameras indicate that Kotau boarded the Shells around the same time as the yacht’s final other passenger, a Dubai-based Azerbaijani woman with a Jordanian passport named Qahira Eynalova.

Although Kotau had regularly traveled to Dubai for business, according to his wife and friend, reporters found no information about how he met Eynalova. Text messages provided to BIC by a source show that Kotau and Eynalova, 49, had known each other for at least two years, and discussed both business and personal matters.

Eynalova did not respond to questions about Kotau or the events on the yacht.

With the four guests on board – Kotau, Eynalova, Grib, and Golovanov – the yacht sailed out on to the Black Sea. The boat manifest stated its destination was the Russian port city of Sochi. It is unclear whether Kotau was aware of this. Russia has repeatedly handed over Belarusian dissidents to face charges back home, and Kotau had a warrant for his arrest in Russia.

The Shells never made it to Sochi, according to port and border crossing records. 

Instead, it began moving toward the Georgian city of Sukhumi in the Russian-backed breakaway region of Abkhazia, home to a massive Russian military presence, according to sources with knowledge of the boat’s route that day.

Sources familiar with the events allege that another boat intercepted the yacht off the coast of Sukhumi. Men from the boat then boarded the Shells and removed Kotau, taking him onto their vessel, the sources said. 

While this information could not be independently confirmed, satellite images reviewed by reporters show a vessel that matches the size and shape of a Russian coast guard patrol boat leaving a base used by the FSB at the nearby port town of Ochamchire, and turning toward Sukhumi around the time the intercepting boat was said to have approached the yacht. 

Border records show the two Russian passengers, Grib and Golovanov, disembarked soon after, and officially entered Abkhazia at 2:42 and 2:46 p.m., respectively. 

Abkhazia’s self-declared authorities did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Georgian government.

When the yacht returned to Trabzon on August 23, two days after it left the marina, Eynalova was the only passenger on board.

‘They Needed Him Alive’

More than nine months after Kotau disappeared, his friends and family have no idea where he is. 

Complicating the search is the place of his disappearance. Georgian conflict analyst Mamuka Komakhia told OCCRP’s partner Deutsche Welle that Abkhazia "is a well-known [legal] gray zone.” 

"There's a lack of control [there] from an international point of view," he added. "Abkhazia is a favorable place to do any illegal activity."

Though Kotau was under the protection of the Polish government as a refugee, authorities in Warsaw have not opened an investigation into his case. Spokesperson for the National Prosecutor’s Office Przemysław Nowak told Deutsche Welle that if a crime was committed in Poland, the prosecutor’s office would have jurisdiction.

Turkish authorities have similarly closed the matter. In their initial investigation report into Kotau’s disappearance, officials noted that Kotau had left the country at the time the missing persons report was filed and therefore would not investigate.

However, some legal experts challenge these approaches. 

Michalevic, the Belarusian lawyer, believes Poland does have grounds to investigate the case, arguing that he was targeted in an operation that began while he was on Polish territory. 

He told BIC that with “political will, initiating a criminal case on the disappearance of Anatol Kotau would be quite easy.” 

Polish prosecutors did not respond to a request for comment on Michalevic's opinion.

Kotau’s friend Ruslan Khazin believes the father of two is still alive. 

"If they wanted to eliminate him, it would have been much easier to do it here, in Warsaw, and stage an accident," he said.

It appears, he added, that “they needed him alive.”