Request for support from the former head of the TUT.BY photo service

BYSOL opened a col­lec­tion in sup­port of a col­league. The fam­i­ly needs to hold on until the jour­nal­ist’s first salary, which he must receive at the wash­ing machine fac­to­ry.

20 years ago I picked up a cam­era and real­ized I want­ed to be a pho­to­jour­nal­ist. A lot of time has passed since then, and over the years I’ve learned not only how to cap­ture moments, but also how to con­vey sto­ries through the lens of a cam­era. We’ve expe­ri­enced dif­fer­ent times, from polit­i­cal events to per­son­al dra­mas, and each one has left an imprint on me and my work.

In 2020, I was seem­ing­ly every­where. Since 2014, I worked as the head of the pho­to ser­vice of the largest Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion por­tal TUT.BY. There­fore, most of the pho­tos from the time of the coro­n­avirus, the 2020 elec­tion cam­paign, and sub­se­quent events that mil­lions of Belaru­sians (and not only Belaru­sians) saw in 2019–2021 passed through my hands. And start­ing on August 8, 2020, I led the pho­to feed in TUT.BY’s dai­ly online and man­aged its pho­to ser­vice.

On May 18, 2021, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties attacked the por­tal, arrest­ed its man­age­ment and sev­er­al edi­tors, so it was decid­ed to evac­u­ate the por­tal’s employ­ees from Belarus on an emer­gency basis. On May 23, I left Belarus and moved to Kiev, where I con­tin­ued to work as a jour­nal­ist and media train­er in a num­ber of inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media, lat­er rec­og­nized as extrem­ist.

With the begin­ning of the inva­sion of Rus­sia into Ukraine, I evac­u­at­ed to Poland, and then, under the pro­gram of sup­port for Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists, to Ger­many, where I am with my fam­i­ly to the present day. All this time until July 2024 I worked as a jour­nal­ist in an inde­pen­dent Belaru­san news agency, but due to dif­fi­cul­ties with financ­ing of inde­pen­dent Belaru­san media I was left with­out a job. I could not find anoth­er place in my spe­cial­ty — there are very few vacan­cies. So, by means of part-time work and using reserves, we sur­vived until Sep­tem­ber, but now there was no mon­ey left.

help the journalist

To get out of the sit­u­a­tion, I got a job at the wash­ing machine fac­to­ry, but I will get my first pay­check only in a month. So we have an apart­ment debt from last month, plus we have insur­ance and elec­tric­i­ty bills to pay. We also need about €300 for gro­ceries. We have paid for inter­net and trav­el expens­es.

I am not ask­ing for help in the form of a non-refund­able aid pay­ment. I will try to pay back all the mon­ey I received in con­tri­bu­tions to the fund as soon as I can earn. I did not think my fam­i­ly would be in a sit­u­a­tion where I would need to ask for help, how­ev­er, all options have been exhaust­ed at this time.

I real­ize that there are sit­u­a­tions much worse than ours, but in this sit­u­a­tion we are at great risk of non-renew­al of our apart­ment con­tract, law­suits that will result in addi­tion­al penal­ties, and pow­er out­ages.

Please help my fam­i­ly.

How much is needed?

€2400

€1300 — 2 months rent
€500 — insur­ance bills
€160 — util­i­ty bills for the month
€140 — recal­cu­la­tion of last year’s elec­tric­i­ty bill
€300 — gro­ceries for a month