Journalist Ihar Ilyash sentenced to four years in prison

The Min­sk City Court has sen­tenced jour­nal­ist and polit­i­cal pris­on­er Ihar Ilyash to four years in prison. Judge Siarhei Katser found him guilty of “dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus” and “facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties.” In addi­tion to the prison term, Ilyash must pay a fine of $1,240.

Ihar Ilyash in court. Sep­tem­ber 16, 2025. Pho­to: @pinkscarvesbelarus

The tri­al, which began in Feb­ru­ary, was repeat­ed­ly delayed. In March, the court ordered a psy­cholin­guis­tic exam­i­na­tion of 15 of Ilyash’s ana­lyt­i­cal arti­cles. Instead of the offi­cial state exper­tise cen­ter, the pub­li­ca­tions were sent for review to Siarhei Liebi­adzin­s­ki, head of the Depart­ment of Russ­ian as a For­eign Lan­guage at Belaru­sian State Uni­ver­si­ty. The pause last­ed near­ly six months before hear­ings resumed in Sep­tem­ber.

On Sep­tem­ber 12, the pros­e­cu­tor request­ed a four-year sen­tence and a fine, while the defense argued for acquit­tal. In his final state­ment, Ilyash reject­ed all charges and main­tained his inno­cence.

Human rights defend­ers note that the expert analy­sis of Ilyash’s arti­cles revealed no false facts, but showed polit­i­cal bias on the part of the eval­u­a­tor.

Ilyash was detained in Octo­ber 2024. State media claimed he gave inter­views to inde­pen­dent out­lets labeled “extrem­ist for­ma­tions” and pro­vid­ed com­ments to Ukrain­ian pub­li­ca­tions about Belarus’s pos­si­ble role in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Rights groups rec­og­nized him as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er the fol­low­ing month.

This is not Ilyash’s first arrest. In 2021, he served 10 days in deten­tion on charges relat­ed to orga­niz­ing actions that dis­rupt­ed pub­lic order, though that case was lat­er dropped.

Ilyash’s wife, jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va), is also behind bars. She was arrest­ed in Novem­ber 2020 while cov­er­ing a protest in Min­sk with cam­er­a­woman Darya Chultso­va. Both were sen­tenced to two years in prison in 2021. Lat­er, Andreye­va was giv­en an addi­tion­al eight-year sen­tence on charges of trea­son, which the Supreme Court lat­er reclas­si­fied as espi­onage. Chultso­va was released in Sep­tem­ber 2022 and now lives in Poland.