Two former Intex-Press executives sentenced to lengthy prison terms

On Feb­ru­ary 26, 2026, the Brest Region­al Court announced sen­tences for the for­mer heads of the Baranavichy news por­tal BAR24 and, pre­vi­ous­ly, the inde­pen­dent news­pa­per Intex-Press: Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich and Andrei Pakalen­ka.

Andrei Pakalen­ka and Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich, for­mer heads of Baranavichy news por­tal BAR24 and pre­vi­ous­ly the inde­pen­dent news­pa­per Intex-Press. Col­lage: BAJ

The tri­al of the media man­agers began on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2026, and was held in closed ses­sion.

Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion obtained by BAJ, both were charged with “high trea­son”. The court sen­tenced Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich to 14 years’ impris­on­ment and a fine of $46,750 payable to the state; Andrei Pakalen­ka received 12 years’ impris­on­ment and a fine of $15,580. There is also infor­ma­tion about an enor­mous joint com­pen­sa­tion pay­ment of approx­i­mate­ly $69,260.

The sub­stance of the charges remains unknown.

Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich is 65 years old. He was the direc­tor and edi­tor-in-chief of Intex-Press, the largest inde­pen­dent region­al news­pa­per. Andrei Pakalen­ka, 44, worked there as deputy direc­tor for devel­op­ment. After the pub­li­ca­tion was liq­ui­dat­ed, they cre­at­ed the news web­site BAR24 (BAR24.by) togeth­er with their team.

In Decem­ber 2024, the staff of the new city por­tal was detained. Secu­ri­ty forces con­duct­ed search­es of their homes and the news­room, seiz­ing equip­ment. Sev­er­al peo­ple were released, while six detainees were placed in pre-tri­al deten­tion and charged with “facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties”.

The BAR24 web­site was last updat­ed on Decem­ber 8, 2024. It was still acces­si­ble to vis­i­tors on Jan­u­ary 9, 2025, but from Jan­u­ary 13, 2025, it stopped open­ing and dis­played the mes­sage “The web­site BAR24.by is tem­porar­i­ly out of ser­vice.”

On Novem­ber 11, 2025, four con­vict­ed BAR24 employ­ees from the for­mer Intex-Press team — Natal­lia Semi­anovich, Miki­ta Pia­trous­ki, Rus­lan Ravi­a­ka, and Liud­mi­la Zelianko­va — were added to the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs list of per­sons involved in “extrem­ist” activ­i­ties. All four were sen­tenced to home con­fine­ment.

History of persecution

The Intex-Press news­room faced prob­lems after the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

In May 2021, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion sent a writ­ten warn­ing stat­ing that an inter­view with Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya pub­lished in the news­pa­per on April 14 was rec­og­nized as an “extrem­ist pub­li­ca­tion” and demand­ing that the “vio­la­tions be cor­rect­ed.”

On May 4, the news­room received a let­ter from the direc­tor of the Brest branch of Bel­sajuz­druk stat­ing that, as of May 5, 2021, the com­pa­ny would can­cel the coop­er­a­tion agree­ment and stop sell­ing the news­pa­per. Retail chains also refused to sell it. The state postal ser­vice Bel­posh­ta removed the inde­pen­dent Baranavichy pub­li­ca­tion from its sub­scrip­tion cat­a­log.

Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich, the direc­tor of Intex-Press Pub­lish­ing House, was twice tried and fined admin­is­tra­tive­ly for pub­lish­ing the Tsikhanouskaya inter­view.

On Feb­ru­ary 15, 2023, law enforce­ment offi­cers came to Intex-Press Pub­lish­ing House with an order to inspect the premis­es. Dur­ing the inspec­tion, they seized sys­tem units, a cam­era, lap­tops, includ­ing employ­ees’ per­son­al lap­tops, as well as com­put­er equip­ment from the account­ing and adver­tis­ing depart­ments. The next day, they detained a cor­re­spon­dent from the pub­li­ca­tion who had pre­vi­ous­ly been called to the police for ques­tion­ing.

On April 29, 2023, at the prosecutor’s ini­tia­tive, the Baranavichy Dis­trict Court rec­og­nized the Intex-Press.by web­site and Intex-Press pages on Odnok­lass­ni­ki, Insta­gram, Twit­ter, Vkon­tak­te, Face­book, Tik­Tok, Telegram, and YouTube chan­nel as “extrem­ist con­tent.”

On May 4, 2023, Belaru­sian author­i­ties restrict­ed access to the pop­u­lar Baranavichy online pub­li­ca­tion. This was done pur­suant to an order by Brest Region­al Pros­e­cu­tor Vik­tar Kli­mau, with the alleged basis being numer­ous vio­la­tions of the Mass Media Act. The Brest Region­al Prosecutor’s Office infor­ma­tion ser­vice claimed that “the news agency repeat­ed­ly pub­lished infor­ma­tion that clear­ly neg­a­tive­ly char­ac­ter­ized the socio-polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try after the elec­tion cam­paign and dis­cred­it­ed the activ­i­ties of state and law enforce­ment agen­cies.”

In ear­ly June 2025, the state broad­cast­er All-Nation­al TV aired a two-part report by Ihar Tur about secu­ri­ty forces’ raids on inde­pen­dent region­al media news­rooms, includ­ing BAR24. The media were accused of coop­er­at­ing with the Ger­man embassy, which was also accused of financ­ing “extrem­ist” resources (at the time the mate­ri­als were pub­lished, none of the media named in the video had been added to the “extrem­ist” list). The report showed inter­ro­ga­tion of a BAR24 employ­ee.