Foreign ministers of Belarus, Russia discuss functioning of media outlets

“I spoke once again to my col­league, Belaru­sian For­eign Min­is­ter Uladz­imir Makiej,” Mr. Lavrov told reporters after the meet­ing. “We have a com­mon under­stand­ing of the need to do every­thing to ensure that Russ­ian media out­lets in Belarus and Belaru­sian media out­lets in Rus­sia work in the most com­fort­able con­di­tions. We have some ideas that we will start to imple­ment soon.”

On Octo­ber 5, the Russ­ian news­pa­per Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da announced that it had decid­ed to close down its Belarus pub­li­ca­tion fol­low­ing the block­ing of its web­site and the arrest of its jour­nal­ist Hien­adź Maže­j­ka.

Mr. Maže­j­ka is the author of an inter­view with a for­mer class­mate of Andrej Zieĺcer, a Min­sk man who was killed by offi­cers of the Com­mit­tee for State Secu­ri­ty (KGB) dur­ing a raid on his apart­ment on Sep­tem­ber 28.

Mr. Zieĺcer, a 31-year-old IT work­er, is believed to have fatal­ly wound­ed a KGB offi­cer before being shot dead inside his apart­ment.

In the inter­view, which was post­ed on the night of Sep­tem­ber 28, a woman who went to school togeth­er with Mr. Zieĺcer described him as a good per­son who “always stood up for truth.”

On the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 29, the Belaru­sian infor­ma­tion min­istry blocked access to kp.by, the web­site of the Belarus ver­sion of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da.

The move angered the Krem­lin, which described it as a vio­la­tion of media free­dom. Vladimir Putin’s spokesper­son lat­er said that Mr. Mažejka’s arrest “can­not be approved of” if it was relat­ed to his jour­nal­is­tic work.

Mr. Maže­j­ka has been charged with incit­ing hatred and insult­ing an offi­cial under the Crim­i­nal Code’s Arti­cles 130 and 369, respec­tive­ly.

On Octo­ber 13, the Par­tyzan­s­ki Dis­trict Court in Min­sk reject­ed an appeal against Mr. Mažejka’s deten­tion, which means that the jour­nal­ist will stay behind bars until at least Decem­ber 1.