81-year-old mother of "Babushkina Krynka" figure Skitov thrown into KGB pre-trial detention center to make him finally speak

Hienadz Skitov. Photo: mnsvu.org

In November 2023, KGB raids took place at several dairy factories. As it soon turned out, the main target was the head of "Babushkina Krynka" Hienadz Skitov, as well as managers of other state enterprises close to him and relatives in managerial positions.

Read also:

26 people detained. Lukashenka spoke about the "dairy case"

"Dairy case": what the CEO of "Babushkina Krynka" is accused of

The KGB and Lukashenka suddenly remembered Skitov's criminal past — a man appointed by Lukashenka's decisions after checks and KGB approval — and began to portray him as a corruptor of the state vertical, a bribe-taker who corrupted even Lukashenka's assistant for the Vitsiebsk region, ex-Minister of Agriculture Ihar Brylo.

Brylo was also detained, and he crumbled in his testimonies. But Skitov did not.

Read also:

It was Elkind, it became Skitov. The history of the director of "Babushkina Krynka" and the backstage of Lukashenka's Administration empire

"Burdens himself and others": Lukashenka's former aide Ihar Brylo takes the blame in industrial volumes

There is still no verdict in the case, although it is already 2026. This is due to Skitov's uncompromising position, who refused to testify so stubbornly that this story of his steadfastness in Barysaŭ — Skitov's small homeland — began to acquire legends.

The trial is already underway, but few details are known yet. Only that Brylo "admitted, remembered, invented" bribes received for $2 million.

But we can judge the position of the main accused by new testimonies from those released from Lukashenka's prisons.

"Nasha Niva" spoke with Siarhei Pavlavitski, Skitov's former cellmate at the KGB pre-trial detention center. They spent several months together in early 2024. Precisely during the active "pressure" on Skitov for testimony.

According to Pavlavitski, even the attitude of the guards towards the cellmates suggested that Skitov posed a problem for the investigation, as he was not cooperating and refused to admit everything he was offered.

"Skitov believed that the root cause of his problems was his refusal to leave "Babushkina Krynka" at the end of 2021, when Anatol Isachenka was appointed to Mahiliou instead of Governor Leanid Zayats.

In Lukashenka's system, there is an informal custom that when a new governor arrives, the heads of the largest enterprises in the region leave with the old one, so that the new one can appoint someone from his own team to commanding positions.

And Skitov claims he dug in his heels: saying, don't involve me in bureaucratic games, I haven't fully implemented my ideas at the enterprise yet, there's still potential.

And this position, he believes, worsened relations with the new governor and opened the possibility for his development in principle. And Brylo's arrest is already a consequence," our interlocutor said.

The schemes Skitov is accused of, he considered widespread, for which there is a simple explanation.

"In this system, Skitov told us, managers' achievements are not properly valued and they are not stimulated. Hienadz Viktaravich gave abstract examples, imagine, someone is put in charge of a bad enterprise, that person gathers a team, and together they reach some new level of profitability. And here's the situation: there's no legal way to encourage team members for achieving results; you can't pay them much legally."

Skitov believed that paying financial bonuses to top management through gray schemes was nothing bad: it motivates professionals to stay in their positions, rather than quitting and thus weakening the enterprise.

Skitov claimed that this is done everywhere in Lukashenka's system. And that whether to imprison or not is not a question of whether such a scheme is uncovered or not.

Павялічыць

Valuables found at Hienadz Skitov's place. Photo disseminated by the State Security Committee

Skitov considered himself to be part of a narrow group of the country's best managers, capable of solving non-trivial tasks.

"Skitov told comical stories about how he once came to work at some state factory with a large — hundreds of thousands of dollars — accounts receivable from a firm in Kazakhstan. They took products for sale, but didn't return the money.

He himself flew there for a showdown, and the Kazakhs told him: "Want the money? Let's play backgammon with you, Hiena..." Well, he sat down and beat them. And they immediately, like honest players, paid everything.

Or how the Vietnamese at MAZ wanted to cheat him: they stopped paying, but through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began complaining to Lukashenka's administration that MAZ was dragging its feet and not fulfilling the contract "which we agreed upon with you, comrade president." And, accordingly, MAZ got flak for not fulfilling the presidential order. And Skitov returned the truth there with a whole combination," his cellmate recounts.

Skitov also told cellmates how he once "escaped a criminal case — hid out for a couple of months in China until everything settled down," the cellmate continues.

Nasha Niva's sources from Belarusian business circles do not rate his abilities as highly as he does. "Whatever Skitov touched, it all fell apart," one businessman said.

From Siarhei Pavlavitski, it also became known that the investigation used dirty tricks to pressure Skitov.

Skitov's mother, his son from his first marriage, and his own brother were put in cells adjacent to Skitov's in the "Amerikanka" (KGB pre-trial detention center).

Skitov's 81-year-old mother was literally sitting behind the wall from Hienadz, and the old woman was forced to sleep on the floor in an overcrowded cell.

"Until his mother was imprisoned, Skitov didn't speak to investigators at all," his cellmate recounts. "And when she was put in such conditions, when Brylo started talking... These are Skitov's words, that 'if it weren't for my mother... would I even talk to these people?'"

As for Brylo, Skitov even scorned to call him by name. In Skitov's view, giving testimony against someone is unacceptable, but if a person betrays you first, then from that moment you have the moral right to respond in kind. That is, he also testified against Brylo without much remorse.

Skitov's son was released in the summer of 2024 due to health reasons. He has a severe injury after an accident, a plate in his skull, and leg problems. He found imprisonment extremely difficult to endure.

Skitov claimed that there was absolutely nothing to accuse his son of and that he was simply being held hostage for the same purpose as his mother — to exert pressure.

It must be said, by the way, that Skitov himself did not have it easy physically either. He ended up in the KGB pre-trial detention center soon after he almost died in China just before — he went on a business trip after stomach surgery and a hemorrhage opened up. Chinese doctors saved him, Skitov was supposed to undergo a rehabilitation course in Belarus, but he was detained.

His cellmate also revealed a rather personal moment. Skitov emphasized that his father was Jewish, and his mother was of Pomor origin. Pomors are an ethnic group in the Arkhangelsk region.

Skitov was proud that in his veins, from both sides, flowed the blood of people who had not experienced serfdom, who had not submitted to either authorities or nature. And this worldview, combined with criminal concepts and principles, according to his cellmate, gave him such self-confidence and fortitude behind bars.

He is a self-confident man and believes in his luck. "Luck favors the prepared" is one of his favorite sayings.

Skitov spoke of his criminal past without enthusiasm. He said that he once sat in Valadarka (pre-trial detention center), that everything was different then, in general terms. Skitov, according to his cellmate, was very angry when he was hinted at having been an accountant for the "Borisov group".

He says, there was no such thing, it's ancient fairy tales.

Павялічыць

Siarhei Elkind (third from left) with criminals at the grave of the figure "Matvei", whose successor became "Zayats". Photo: Yezhednevnik

"One cellmate once came from an interrogation and said, 'Oh, Hienadz Viktaravich, you're a mafioso, it turns out! The investigator told me that all of Barysaŭ breathed a sigh of relief when you were detained.' Skitov then got on his high horse: 'I know who's stirring up this shit, who's spreading different rumors about me.' He didn't name names, though," says Nasha Niva's interlocutor.

Павялічыць

Hienadz Elkind (his current surname is Skitov) on the far right in the company of people, some of whom were considered part of the Barysaŭ criminal underworld. Photo: Yezhednevnik

Skitov's mother spent several months in the KGB pre-trial detention center and returned to her house on the outskirts of Barysaŭ, where she lives alone.

"When his mother was released, a roasted piglet started appearing in our cell every week. His mother specifically bought it from someone, roasted it herself, and sent it to us.

The piglet usually lasted two days, after which all the rest, if lucky 300 grams and not half a kilo, went into the trash. Because we didn't have time to eat it all.

He received all sorts of things: friends from the meat processing plant, from "Belryba", from MAZ, from "Babushkina Krynka" — everyone sent something. In the KGB pre-trial detention center, parcels are historically viewed more liberally than in other places.

Letters were mainly written to him by relatives. He has two marriages. A son from the first — that's the one who was in the next cell, and two sons from the second — at that time one was in 11th grade, the other in 9th.

And his mother, when she was released from the pre-trial detention center, sometimes wrote funny things too. He showed how she instructed her son: "Hienadz, with your stomach, you must eat soups! I know — they are tasty there."

In response, Hienadz wrote how many times he squats during walks, that he tries to stay in shape, walks fast during strolls, and does abdominal exercises.

Incidentally, he was taught abdominal exercises by the Ukrainian saboteur Mikalai Shvets.

Shvets also sat in their "star" cell. There was no particular reaction to him. Yes, he immediately said, "I'm the one who..." "Well, he blew it up and he blew it up. War is war," is how the cellmate describes the reaction to Shvets. Mikalai occasionally indulged in reflections, talking about his farm near Kyiv.

Shvets was simply a sincere person by nature, but there were also those who had blown up no Russian planes, yet in the cell they would start: "that's what the Muscovites deserve," "that's how they should be treated." Skitov saw this as a provocation, believing that they were trying to provoke him into something.

Because there is such a practice now, when some official is arrested for corruption, and in the course of the investigation, he begins to express some views and earns himself state treason in the process. And he goes to the colony already as an "extremist," and the corruption charge might even drop. So here he was very careful.

Skitov expressed the opinion that if Belarus were drawn into the war, the country would not be ready for it.

He reacted with a condescending smirk to news about territorial defense. When pot-bellied uncles were brought out and told that this was their reliable stronghold, he scoffed.

He himself gladly recounted how he had set up the mobilization training system at his "Babushkina Krynka". That they always practiced air raid alerts.

How he organized the security of the enterprise there, so that no saboteurs could really get through, if anything. He had chemicals in tanks there, maybe ammonia. And if it exploded there... he believed that saboteurs might consider the factory a target.

"When Shvets left, the special forces analyst Vasilets moved into our cell, who said, 'I would have gotten in there with explosives,' and Skitov replied to him, 'Maybe you would have gotten in somewhere, but not into my factory, because everyone there is trained.'

What might indicate Skitov's true attitude towards the war is Shvets's last day in our cell. They tell him: 'Alright, pack up.'

We pack his bags. Viktaravich himself puts in: 'Here's some sausage for you, here's some onion, here's some lard.' Because we don't know where he's going, they don't say that, probably — to another cell. And then it turned out that he was being exchanged.

So Skitov hands him this snack and says: 'Mikalai, just don't blow up our planes anymore,' — recalls Pavlavitski.

In conversations about internal Belarusian topics, Skitov participated somewhat, because here he had a position.

"He agreed that the system was inefficient, but," he believed, "without 'Father,' as he called Lukashenka, it would collapse. He meant that everything rests on Lukashenka, and if he were removed, things would get worse."

His cellmate understood that Skitov valued the same qualities in Lukashenka that he valued in himself: the ability to maneuver, to get out of dangerous situations, to hold onto a lucrative position.

"And do you know where the largest red-green flag was sewn in 2020?" he boasted. "At 'Babushkina Krynka'! When you get out, check it online. And then they carried it in demonstrations."

"And do you know who held power in Mahiliou in 2020?" Skitov might get excited. He claimed that he came to the Mahiliou city executive committee demanding to convene a rally in support of Lukashenka. And on his own initiative, he sent four buses of his employees to Minsk on August 16.

What prognosis did Skitov give regarding his fate?

"At the time I left him, he was still facing a dilemma: 'Either you admit everything now and get 9 [years], or you don't admit it and stick to what you took this, but didn't take that, and get 12.'"

And he was more inclined towards the second option. Although he admitted he might not survive the colony.

"I even tried to cheer him up: 'Viktaravich, maybe an amnesty?' — 'They're unlikely to give me one,' — his cellmate recalls.

"But if, he said, they give me a kolkhoz (collective farm), I will be grateful. I will be sincerely grateful, I will put the kolkhoz on its feet and once again prove that Skitov belongs to the top managers in Belarus and that such talents should not be buried in the ground."

And if the kolkhoz doesn't work out, then he has an idea to go into the funeral business, crematories.

Skitov does not entertain thoughts of emigration.

He says: "I only understand how to do business in three countries: Ukraine, Russia, Belarus. He says, I even went to Central Asia, to Kazakhstan — I don't understand it. I can negotiate with them there, I can promote goods, do marketing, but I still don't feel in my element. Only Ukraine, Russia, Belarus. Here I perfectly understand people, I understand what a person needs — a richer person, a poorer person. And here I am in my place."

• 4
• 2
• 6
• 26
• 3
• 1
• 1
• 0