Belarus adds more independent journalists to interstate wanted lists

This occurred over the past three and a half months — after April 2026, though the exact dates are unknown.

Screen­shot from the SOTA search tool, sourced from the Face­book page of Siarhei Pad­sason­ny

“Final­ly! I thought this day would nev­er come. But it’s now offi­cial — my name appears in the want­ed data­bas­es via the SOTA search tool. As a child I used to walk past the local police sta­tion and look with fear at the board with the red inscrip­tion ‘Want­ed by the police,’ and now I’m a crim­i­nal myself. Though today, being in that com­pa­ny is an hon­or!” wrote for­mer Bel­sat tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter Siarhei Pad­sason­ny on his Face­book page.

The jour­nal­ist worked for 17 years at that chan­nel — which has been des­ig­nat­ed an “extrem­ist enti­ty” in Belarus — before leav­ing in 2025. Siarhei Pad­sason­ny now teach­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­saw.

Viachaslau Laza­rau, a for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er and video­g­ra­ph­er, learned from peo­ple he knows that infor­ma­tion from the Russ­ian want­ed data­base had appeared on the SOTA outlet’s web­site. As with Siarhei Pad­sason­ny, the per­son­al details list­ed do not spec­i­fy the grounds for his place­ment on the crim­i­nal want­ed list.

“Pos­si­bly they have opened a new crim­i­nal case for ‘extrem­ism,’ since after my release I gave sev­er­al inter­views to inde­pen­dent media out­lets that are con­sid­ered ‘extrem­ist enti­ties’ in Belarus. But I don’t know the exact grounds. What I do know for cer­tain is that in April of this year my name was not yet in the Russ­ian Federation’s want­ed data­base,” Viachaslau Laza­rau said.

In Belarus, the video­g­ra­ph­er was sen­tenced to five years’ impris­on­ment for his pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties — specif­i­cal­ly for work­ing with Bel­sat. On Sep­tem­ber 11, 2025, he was released under a par­don fol­low­ing a vis­it to Min­sk by US Spe­cial Envoy John Coale, and was forcibly tak­en to Lithua­nia; the Belaru­sian author­i­ties sub­se­quent­ly annulled his pass­port.

Blog­ger Dzmit­ry Kazlou (“Seryi Kot”), also a for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er, is like­wise forced to live abroad with an annulled pass­port. His name has also been added to the Russ­ian want­ed data­base after April 2026.

In ear­ly May of this year, the out­let Medi­a­zona Belarus pub­lished a report on the list of indi­vid­u­als in the Russ­ian Federation’s want­ed data­base. Belaru­sian cit­i­zens are added to the data­base at the request of Belaru­sian secu­ri­ty forces. This means that these indi­vid­u­als are want­ed in both coun­tries and may be extra­dit­ed from “friend­ly coun­tries.” The data­base con­tained near­ly 6,000 Belaru­sians at that point, and that num­ber has grown fur­ther over the past three and a half months.