Current Time Belarus Suspends Broadcasting

All employ­ees of the Belaru­sian edi­to­r­i­al team of the project have been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave. The announce­ment was made by the TV chan­nel Cur­rent Time, orig­i­nal­ly estab­lished by RFE/RL with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Voice of Amer­i­ca.

Cur­rent Time Belarus is a seg­ment of the Cur­rent Time TV chan­nel, which was launched in 2023 to serve a Russ­ian-speak­ing audi­ence in Belarus. As chan­nel direc­tor Pavel Butorin explained in an inter­view with BAJ at the time, the project aimed to pro­vide Belaru­sians with inter­est­ing and use­ful infor­ma­tion with­out cen­sor­ship or restric­tions, and to cov­er press­ing issues — pri­mar­i­ly with­in the coun­try, but also beyond its bor­ders.

“The foun­da­tion of our work is human dig­ni­ty and the right to free access to uncen­sored infor­ma­tion. It’s the free­dom of expres­sion, the right to prac­tice any reli­gion — or none at all — the right of peo­ple to choose their lead­ers in demo­c­ra­t­ic, trans­par­ent elec­tions, and the right to know what’s hap­pen­ing in their own coun­try and in the world,” Butorin said.

As of today, the project has ceased broad­cast­ing. This step had to be tak­en because RFE/RL has still not been able to resume its fund­ing, which was cut off by the U.S. Agency for Glob­al Media (USAGM).

“Our project just turned two years old. Our YouTube chan­nel draws 8.5 mil­lion views per year, and our Tik­Tok account reach was over 10 mil­lion. 75% of our audi­ence watch­es us from with­in Belarus.

Now we are forced to halt oper­a­tions for at least a month. Dur­ing this time, we won’t be able to report news, share sto­ries, pro­duce analy­sis, or talk about what mat­ters to our audi­ence.

For a con­tent-based project, this is like falling into a coma — with each day of inac­tiv­i­ty, the chances of revival shrink. But we hope to remain viable,” said the head of Cur­rent Time Belarus who stays anony­mous for fear of repres­sion by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties.