Authorities place nearly 6,000 Belarusians on interstate wanted list, including several independent journalists

Their names appear in the Russ­ian Federation’s want­ed per­sons data­base. Belaru­sian cit­i­zens end up there at the request of Belaru­sian secu­ri­ty agen­cies. This means peo­ple are being sought in both coun­tries and can also be extra­dit­ed from “friend­ly coun­tries.” This is report­ed by Medi­a­zona. Belarus.

Image cre­at­ed by BAJ using Chat­G­PT

The pub­li­ca­tion updates infor­ma­tion about the crim­i­nal want­ed list of Belaru­sians in Rus­sia sev­er­al times a year; the pre­vi­ous update was at the begin­ning of Octo­ber 2025. The lat­est update shows that in the past six months, sev­er­al more Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists have been added to the want­ed list.

Among them are inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Tat­siana Ashurke­vich, who became aware of the pros­e­cu­tion in Novem­ber last year, and Iry­na Khalip, a spe­cial cor­re­spon­dent for Novaya Gaze­ta Europe, against whom the Navap­o­latsk Prosecutor’s Office opened a crim­i­nal case.

Also list­ed are host of the media project Made in Poland Mak­sim Parshuta, Deutsche Welle jour­nal­ist Ulliana Babayed, media con­sul­tant Dzia­n­is Vasilk­ou, Homel jour­nal­ist and writer Ale­na Her­manovich, author of the project Chest­nOK Live and for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er Ali­ak­san­dr Ivulin, and jour­nal­ist and writer Ali­ak­san­dr Char­nukha.

Cur­rent­ly, near­ly 6,000 peo­ple are on the inter­state want­ed list; 1,118 cit­i­zens and natives of Belarus were added in the past six months, which means Belarus has ini­ti­at­ed crim­i­nal cas­es against them. The spe­cif­ic arti­cle is not always indi­cat­ed in the data­base.

Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists have pre­vi­ous­ly been placed on the want­ed list in both Belarus and Rus­sia. For instance, in Jan­u­ary 2025, BAJ deputy chair Barys Haret­s­ki was added, fol­lowed in March 2025 by Aleh Aheyeu, who heads the legal ser­vice of Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

BAJ Deputy Chair Aleh Aheyeu at the Forum of Baltic and Per­se­cut­ed Jour­nal­ists. Decem­ber 18, 2025. Pho­to: BAJ

“Each coun­try is an enti­ty that car­ries out crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for crimes com­mit­ted on its ter­ri­to­ry. Accord­ing­ly, if a crim­i­nal has left the coun­try and law enforce­ment knows their new loca­tion, they can send a spe­cif­ic request to the coun­try where they are believed to be locat­ed, or declare them inter­na­tion­al­ly want­ed.

There are var­i­ous pro­ce­dures for this, most often through Inter­pol. Each coun­try that is part of Inter­pol can car­ry out this search on its ter­ri­to­ry and exe­cute all its nation­al pro­ce­dures.

There­fore, if crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion author­i­ties have added a cer­tain per­son to the so-called inter­na­tion­al want­ed list, then each Inter­pol coun­try can declare them want­ed accord­ing to its nation­al pro­ce­dures.

Rus­sia includes a large num­ber of Belaru­sians in its want­ed data­base pre­cise­ly because they have been declared inter­na­tion­al­ly want­ed by Belaru­sian pros­e­cu­tion author­i­ties,” Aleh Aheyeu explained at the time.