Joint report by Justice for Journalists and BAJ: “Attacks on media representatives in Belarus in 2025”

Attacks through judi­cial and/or eco­nom­ic mech­a­nisms remain the main method of pres­sure on jour­nal­ists — they account for 95% of all record­ed inci­dents.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty action with polit­i­cal­ly impris­oned jour­nal­ists. Luk­iškės prison, Vil­nius, may 3, 2024. Pho­to: BAJ

1/ KEY FINDINGS

In 2025, 478 cas­es of attacks/threats against pro­fes­sion­al and cit­i­zen media work­ers, as well as against edi­to­r­i­al offices of tra­di­tion­al and online media out­lets in Belarus and against Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in exile, were iden­ti­fied and analysed. Data for the study was col­lect­ed using con­tent analy­sis from open sources in three lan­guages: Belaru­sian, Russ­ian and Eng­lish. The list of main sources is pro­vid­ed in Appen­dix 1.

1. Attacks via judi­cial and/or eco­nom­ic means remain the pre­vail­ing method of pres­sure  (95% of all inci­dents).
2. Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, as of Feb­ru­ary 2026, 28 media work­ers remain behind bars in Belarus.
3. Pres­sure is direct­ed at media work­ers who were forced into exile, with the Belaru­sian author­i­ties employ­ing so‑called “spe­cial pro­ceed­ings” as a tool of repres­sion.
4. In 2025, an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of in absen­tia crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of media work­ers who have left the coun­try inten­si­fied.
5. The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus con­tin­ued to expand the Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als, as well as List of Cit­i­zens of the Repub­lic of Belarus, For­eign Cit­i­zens and State­less Per­sons Involved in Extrem­ist Activ­i­ties.

2/ THE POLITICAL SITUATION AND THE MEDIA IN BELARUS

The sit­u­a­tion regard­ing free­dom of expres­sion and inde­pen­dent media in Belarus remains among the worst in the world. In the 2025 Press Free­dom Index, Belarus ranks 166th out of 179 coun­tries. Accord­ing to the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists (CPJ), Belarus is the fifth‑worst coun­try glob­al­ly in terms of the num­ber of jour­nal­ists behind bars, and the second‑worst in Europe and Cen­tral Asia. In line with the report by Reporters With­out Bor­ders, as of 1 Decem­ber 2025 Belarus ranked fourth in the world for the num­ber of jour­nal­ists in deten­tion.

In June, Sep­tem­ber and Decem­ber 2025, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, under an agree­ment with the US gov­ern­ment, released 189 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers (as of ear­ly 2026, more than 1,130 peo­ple recog­nised as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers remain in places of deten­tion in Belarus). On 21 June, among the 14 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers released and imme­di­ate­ly expelled to Lithua­nia was the for­mer Radio Svabo­da jour­nal­ist Ihar Karnei.

On 11 Sep­tem­ber, 52 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers were released, among them twelve media work­ers and blog­gers: Iry­na Slavnika­va, Miko­la Dzi­adok, Pavel Mazhe­j­ka, Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich, Larysa Shchyrako­va, Yauhen Merkis, Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk, Viachaslau Lazareu, Pavel Pad­abed, Ihar Losik, Dzmit­ry Kazlou and Pavel Vinahradau. It should be not­ed that most of the for­mer pris­on­ers were deprived of their iden­ti­ty doc­u­ments, and all were denied the pos­si­bil­i­ty of choos­ing their coun­try of res­i­dence. As in June, the so‑called “release” was in fact a depor­ta­tion (expul­sion from the Repub­lic of Belarus).

On 13 Decem­ber, a fur­ther 123 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers were released and deport­ed from Belarus. Among those freed in Decem­ber was the for­mer editor‑in‑chief of what was once the country’s largest online por­tal, TUT.BY, Mary­na Zolata­va, who spent four and a half years in deten­tion on polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed charges (the outlet’s direc­tor, Liud­mi­la Chek­ina, sen­tenced to 12 years of impris­on­ment, remains behind bars), as well as BAJ mem­bers Ales Biali­ats­ki (Nobel Peace Prize lau­re­ate) and Ali­ak­san­dr Fedu­ta (pub­li­cist and lit­er­ary schol­ar).

How­ev­er, accord­ing to Andrei Bas­tunets, Chair­per­son of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, they were“…effec­tive­ly deport­ed from the coun­try along with oth­er freed polit­i­cal pris­on­ers on unclear legal grounds and with­out any doc­u­ments or expla­na­tions.” Thus, the enforced exile has become yet anoth­er method of elim­i­na­tion of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism from inside the coun­try.

Repres­sion against media pro­fes­sion­als con­tin­ues. In Feb­ru­ary 2026, tri­als are sched­uled for at least three media work­ers.

Pres­sure is also exert­ed on those media work­ers who were forced to leave the coun­try. The Belaru­sian author­i­ties use so‑called “spe­cial pro­ceed­ings” as a tool of repres­sion — in absen­tia crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists, activists and politi­cians in exile, which may include the con­fis­ca­tion of their prop­er­ty. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists is aware of rough­ly 100 cas­es of in absen­tia crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in exile since 2020 (the ini­ti­a­tion of crim­i­nal cas­es and the start of spe­cial pro­ceed­ings). Some jour­nal­ists pre­fer not to dis­close infor­ma­tion about their pros­e­cu­tion for secu­ri­ty rea­sons.

Fam­i­lies of those who were forced to flee the coun­try are also sub­ject­ed to pres­sure: search­es are car­ried out at their homes, they receive police sum­mons­es, and face threats and intim­i­da­tion.

To obstruct the work of inde­pen­dent media, the author­i­ties con­tin­ue to apply anti‑extremism leg­is­la­tion. Most inde­pen­dent media out­lets and media organ­i­sa­tions have been des­ig­nat­ed as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions”. In addi­tion, the author­i­ties clas­si­fy the infor­ma­tion­al out­put of Belaru­sian media, oth­er organ­i­sa­tions and indi­vid­u­als as “extrem­ist mate­ri­als”. Sub­scrib­ing to “extrem­ist” out­lets is equat­ed with sup­port­ing extrem­ist for­ma­tions and may lead to crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty.

Thus, the key out­comes of 2025 for Belaru­sian media and jour­nal­ists were:

• the begin­ning of the process of releas­ing jour­nal­ists who are polit­i­cal pris­on­ers; how­ev­er, those released are deprived of the right to choose where they live — they are forcibly removed from Belarus;
• at the same time, the con­tin­u­a­tion of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion both of media pro­fes­sion­als and of ordi­nary cit­i­zens for express­ing their opin­ions; an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the prac­tice of in absen­tia crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of media work­ers who have left the coun­try;
• the active use of anti‑extremism leg­is­la­tion to sup­press free­dom of expres­sion, includ­ing by bring­ing cit­i­zens to crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty for the “dis­tri­b­u­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als” (on social media and else­where) and for coop­er­a­tion with “extrem­ist for­ma­tions”, a label the author­i­ties have applied to almost all lead­ing inde­pen­dent media;
• a height­ened cli­mate of fear in Belarus (rel­a­tives of jour­nal­ists who are being pros­e­cut­ed or have already been con­vict­ed are afraid to pass infor­ma­tion to the media due to threats of harsh­er sen­tences or wors­en­ing con­di­tions for their loved ones in deten­tion if pub­li­ca­tions appear in the press);
• the strength­en­ing of state pro­pa­gan­da in Belarus, the con­tin­ued use of “con­fes­sion­al videos”, inten­si­fied cyber‑attacks, and the use of fake accounts and dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns to dis­cred­it oppo­nents of the author­i­ties.

3/ GENERAL ANALYSIS OF ATTACKS

In 2025, the num­ber of record­ed attacks on Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and media out­lets increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pared with pre­vi­ous years. Rel­a­tive to 2024, the num­ber of attacks rose by 36%. This occurred despite the fact that five years had passed since the sup­pres­sion of the post‑election protests in 2020 and that new pres­i­den­tial elec­tions were held in 2025 — devel­op­ments that might have been expect­ed to “close” the chap­ter of per­se­cu­tion of dis­senters.

As in pre­vi­ous years, the main type of attacks against Belaru­sian media and their staff were those car­ried out through use of legal and/or eco­nom­ic mech­a­nisms. They account­ed for around 95% of all inci­dents. It should be not­ed that 465 of the 478 attacks orig­i­nat­ed from rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the author­i­ties. In 2017–2020, the share of attacks involv­ing legal or eco­nom­ic mech­a­nisms stood at 83–85%; in 2021–2022 it ranged from 90% to 94%; and in 2023–2024 it reached 96%.

4/ PHYSICAL ATTACKS AND THREATS TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND HEALTH

The num­ber of phys­i­cal attacks and threats against jour­nal­ists, which peaked dur­ing the 2020 protest peri­od, has grad­u­al­ly decreased. In 2025, six phys­i­cal attacks were record­ed, the same num­ber as in 2024. The decrease in phys­i­cal attacks is the result of the forced emi­gra­tion of most jour­nal­ists from the coun­try or their with­draw­al from jour­nal­is­tic work due to direct threats to their safe­ty. In all doc­u­ment­ed cas­es, the per­pe­tra­tors of phys­i­cal attacks were rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the author­i­ties.

All record­ed inci­dents were linked to media pro­fes­sion­als serv­ing crim­i­nal sen­tences (place­ment in pun­ish­ment cells, denial of med­ical assis­tance, depri­va­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with rel­a­tives and even with lawyers — a regime of incom­mu­ni­ca­do deten­tion). How­ev­er, the real num­ber of such vio­la­tions is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er due to their latent nature and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of con­firm­ing them while polit­i­cal pris­on­ers remain in places of deten­tion. Some of these cas­es are: 

• It became known that Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Ivashin spent around two weeks in May 2025 in a pun­ish­ment cell in Prison No. 8 in Žodz­i­na.
• Impris­oned jour­nal­ist Andrzej Poc­zobut has been repeat­ed­ly pun­ished with soli­tary con­fine­ment and con­tin­u­ous­ly held in a high-secu­ri­ty cell. He is also denied phone calls and has not been allowed a sin­gle vis­it with rel­a­tives or received any parcels dur­ing his impris­on­ment.
• Vyach­eslav (Vaclav) Ore­shko, jour­nal­ist and pub­li­cist, who was sen­tenced to eight years in prison, is expe­ri­enc­ing seri­ous health prob­lems while in deten­tion. He has near­ly gone blind and, accord­ing to a for­mer inmate of the colony, “can bare­ly see beyond the length of his own arm.”

5/ NON-PHYSICAL AND/OR CYBER-ATTACKS AND THREATS

In 2025, 15 non-phys­i­cal and/or cyber-attacks and threats were record­ed. The vio­la­tions includ­ed severe DDoS attacks on the web­sites of Nasha Niva, Zerka­lo, and the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, as well as large‑scale bot attacks tar­get­ing inde­pen­dent media resources. The hack­ing of the Telegram chat­bot of the project Belarus­ki Hajun (an OSINT mon­i­tor­ing ini­tia­tive that tracked the mil­i­tary activ­i­ty of Russ­ian and Belaru­sian forces in Belarus) led to the project’s clo­sure and to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of a large num­ber of Belaru­sians who had pro­vid­ed it with infor­ma­tion. The exact num­ber of peo­ple pros­e­cut­ed in the Belarus­ki Hajun case is unknown; human rights defend­ers esti­mate around 160–170 con­firmed defen­dants in crim­i­nal cas­es, though the real num­ber may be high­er.

Oth­er types of attacks includ­ed pres­sure on the rel­a­tives of jour­nal­ists who had left the coun­try, dam­age of prop­er­ty, the cre­ation of fake accounts, and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of dis­in­for­ma­tion. In rough­ly one‑third of cas­es, such attacks were car­ried out by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the author­i­ties, but in most cas­es the per­pe­tra­tors remained uniden­ti­fied.

On 17 Decem­ber, Reporters With­out Borders’s Dig­i­tal Secu­ri­ty Lab has uncov­ered a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown spy­ware tool used by the State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee (KGB) of Belarus to tar­get, among oth­ers, jour­nal­ists and media work­ers. RSF assess­es that this expo­sure is a seri­ous set­back for the KGB’s oper­a­tions, not least because the soft­ware appears to have been in use for sev­er­al years.

6/ ATTACKS VIA JUDICIAL AND/OR ECONOMIC MEANS

The main type of attacks against Belaru­sian media and their staff in 2025, as in pre­vi­ous years, were attacks with the use of judi­cial and/or eco­nom­ic means. They account­ed for around 95% of all inci­dents. It should be not­ed that 465 of the 478 attacks orig­i­nat­ed from rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the author­i­ties. Among the main types of attacks are crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive cas­es and inclu­sion into the reg­istry of “extrem­ist” mate­ri­als (226 inci­dents) and inter­ro­ga­tions, searchers, con­fis­ca­tions and court tri­als (169 inci­dents).

In 2025, the author­i­ties con­tin­ued to active­ly use anti‑extremism leg­is­la­tion to sup­press free­dom of expres­sion. The des­ig­na­tion of Belaru­sian media projects as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions” con­tin­ued. As pre­vi­ous­ly, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion con­tin­ued to add a larg­er num­ber of social media accounts of media projects and media work­ers to the Repub­li­can List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als. Accord­ing to Vias­na, in 2025, courts declared 2,107 pieces of infor­ma­tion­al con­tent “extrem­ist” — rang­ing from Telegram chan­nels and Tik­Tok accounts to books, web­sites of inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions, and even a page list­ing polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. The Repub­li­can List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als expand­ed to 1,928 pages and 8,172 entries.

Sev­er­al media work­ers have been sen­tenced over the past year. Among these cas­es are:

• On July 25, free­lance jour­nal­ist Dani­il Palian­s­ki was found guilty under Arti­cle 356 of the Crim­i­nal Code (trea­son to the state) and sen­tenced to 10 years of impris­on­ment and a fine of 21,000 rubles (5,500 EUR).
• On August 8, jour­nal­ist Aleh Suprun­yuk received a three-year prison sen­tence. He was con­vict­ed of involve­ment in an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” (Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Pri­or to the ver­dict, he had spent over six months in pre-tri­al deten­tion.
• On 16 Sep­tem­ber, Ihar Ilyash was sen­tenced to four years in prison and fined 4,200 rubles (1,050 EUR) on charges of dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus (Arti­cle 369 of the Crim­i­nal Code ) and facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties (Part 2 of Arti­cle 361 of the Crim­i­nal Code).
• On 5 Octo­ber, videoblog­ger Karoli­na Kononovich report­ed that she had been sen­tenced to two and a half years’ impris­on­ment under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (active par­tic­i­pa­tion in actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order). She was detained upon arrival in Min­sk from Ams­ter­dam and spent four months in pre‑trial deten­tion. After the ver­dict was deliv­ered, she left Belarus.
• On Octo­ber 31, the Hrod­na Region­al Court sen­tenced Siarhei Chabot­s­ka under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (cre­ation of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion). The edi­tor was sen­tenced to three years and six months in a medi­um-secu­ri­ty penal colony and fined.
• Blog­ger Poli­na Zyl was sen­tenced to one year in a gen­er­al-secu­ri­ty penal colony. She was detained in Feb­ru­ary and charged with organ­i­sa­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them (Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code).
• Blog­ger Mak­sim Shukanau was sen­tenced to four years in a penal colony. He was charged with organ­i­sa­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them (Art. 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code); cre­ation of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion, or par­tic­i­pa­tion in it (Art. 361‑1 of the Crim­i­nal Code); and pro­mot­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties (Art. 361‑4 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Mak­sim had over 6,000 sub­scribers to his YouTube chan­nel Union Bell.
• Jour­nal­ist Pali­na Pitke­vich was charged with par­tic­i­pa­tion in an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” (under Part 3 of Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and sen­tenced Pali­na to three years in a gen­er­al-secu­ri­ty penal colony.

The exiled media work­ers were fur­ther crim­i­nal­ly pros­e­cut­ed in absen­tia in Belarus:

• On May 2, Siarhei Bias­palau, a blog­ger and the founder of ‘My Coun­try Belarus’ Telegram chan­nel was sen­tenced in absen­tia to 18 years in prison and a fine under sev­er­al arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code. Among oth­er, he was crim­i­nal­ly charged for the alleged ‘con­spir­a­cy to seize pow­er in the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al way’ (arti­cle 357), ‘arrange­ment of riots, which were accom­pa­nied with vio­lence, pogroms, arson, destruc­tion of prop­er­ty and mil­i­tary resis­tance to gov­ern­men­tal offi­cials’ (arti­cle 293) as well as ‘insults and slan­der against the pres­i­dent of Belarus’ (arti­cles 367 and 368).
• On June 3, blog­ger Anton Motolko was sen­tenced in absen­tia to 20 years in prison for trea­son, organ­is­ing mass riots, call­ing for the seizure of pow­er, dis­cred­it­ing Belarus, insult­ing and slan­der­ing Alyak­san­dr Lukashen­ka and oth­er arti­cles (13 in total).

ANNEX 1: OPEN SOURCES USED FOR GATHERING DATA (BELARUS)

• Arti­cle 19 – an inter­na­tion­al human rights organ­i­sa­tion that works to defend and pro­mote free­dom of expres­sion and free­dom of infor­ma­tion world­wide.
• Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists – the largest demo­c­ra­t­ic non-gov­ern­men­tal asso­ci­a­tion of Belaru­sian media rep­re­sen­ta­tives, a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al and Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.
• Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus –a nation­al gov­ern­ment agency in the field of mass media that has seri­ous admin­is­tra­tive and sanc­tion pow­ers (from reg­is­ter­ing mass media to ini­ti­at­ing their clo­sure, as well as extra­ju­di­cial block­ing of Inter­net resources).
• Bel­sat – a Pol­ish free-to-air satel­lite tele­vi­sion chan­nel aimed at Belarus.
• Belta – a state news agency cre­at­ed to dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion about the activ­i­ties of the state bod­ies of Belarus.
• Pozirk – a Belaru­sian news agency launched by jour­nal­ists who had worked for Bela­PAN and Naviny.by.
• Reporters With­out Bor­ders – an inter­na­tion­al non-prof­it and non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion that safe­guards the right to free­dom of infor­ma­tion.
• Zerka­lo – a Belaru­sian infor­ma­tion por­tal.
• Vias­na Human Rights Cen­tre – a non-gov­ern­men­tal human rights orga­ni­za­tion, cre­at­ed in 1996 dur­ing mass protest actions of the demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion in Belarus. 
• Belaru­sian and Eng­lish-lan­guage resources that are avail­able online.