The Opposition Is Creating a Personnel Reserve. Could Agents Infiltrate It?

Yury Hubarevich emphasizes the importance of finding proactive people who would like to take up positions in public administration and become part of future changes:

“When change comes to Belarus, new people will be needed—people who have not been involved in the crimes committed by the current regime, who did not dismiss subordinates because of their political views, and who did not organize election fraud. In some sectors, a complete replacement of personnel will be necessary. These people have to come from somewhere, and ideally they should already be prepared, understand how the state system works, how decisions are made, and how to manage teams.”

Hubarevich considers it entirely possible that applications are also being submitted by agents of the security services.

“Today, more than 650 people are part of the initiative. We do not rule out that some of them may be KGB officers monitoring our activities. In fact, we already received a kind of ‘high rating’ from them when the ‘Personnel Reserve’ initiative was designated an extremist formation in May of this year.”

At the same time, Hubarevich notes that the security services do not have access to participants’ personal data.

“When we receive applications, we separate personal information from the main database, which contains details about a person’s education, work experience, expectations, and the area of public administration where they see themselves working. We only work with this main dataset.”

According to Hubarevich, different stages of the program require different approaches to vetting candidates.

“If these are online programs, extensive screening is not necessary. However, when we organize offline events where small groups of 15–20 people meet, the risk of de-anonymization increases. In such cases, we ask participants to acknowledge that they understand these risks when they agree to take part.”

Hubarevich stresses that the organizers do everything possible to keep participants safe, but cannot provide absolute guarantees.

“A person may make careless mistakes themselves. We advise participants to use VPNs and not to submit applications from their personal email accounts. These are precautions that everyone must take responsibility for. We cannot guarantee that no information will be found on a participant’s personal computer—especially in Belarus, where around 30% of the initiative’s participants are located.”