E‑newsletter: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS No.1 (82) 2026

Mass media in Belarus in Octo­ber – Decem­ber 2025. Review. Down­load PDF.

TUT.BY Edi­tor-in-Chief Mary­na Zolata­va with her chil­dren and hus­band, Decem­ber 18, 2025, War­saw, Poland. Pho­to: “Zerka­lo”

The repres­sive pol­i­cy in rela­tion to mass media rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­tin­ued in Belarus at the end of 2025:

• Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and blog­gers with­in the coun­try as well as those who crit­i­cize the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus from abroad was fur­ther imple­ment­ed with­in the peri­od under review. In par­tic­u­lar, 5 sen­tences were passed against jour­nal­ists, and 3 sen­tences were pro­nounced against blog­gers,
• Cen­sor­ship was in effect in its var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions. Among oth­er, 2 media projects were rec­og­nized as ‘extrem­ist group­ings’ and 7 jour­nal­ists were labeled by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties as ‘extrem­ists’ with­in the peri­od under review,
• The Belaru­sian author­i­ties man­aged to seize the euroradio.by domain name from the Euro­pean Radio for Belarus, which was reg­is­tered by a for­eign com­pa­ny,
• It became known about severe pres­sure on some polit­i­cal pris­on­ers for report­ing about them by inde­pen­dent media, which can be con­sid­ered a spe­cif­ic man­i­fes­ta­tion of cen­sor­ship,
• Along with cen­sor­ship, offi­cial pro­pa­gan­da and dis­cred­i­ta­tion of oppo­nents remained an inte­gral part of Belaru­sian gov­ern­men­tal pol­i­cy in the media field. The out­come of a spe­cial study indi­cates the pres­ence of a ‘dig­i­tal author­i­tar­i­an­ism trend’ in Belarus, which is the over­sat­u­ra­tion of the media field with con­trolled nar­ra­tives.

At the same time, the largest release of Belaru­sian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers (123 peo­ple) took place as a result of nego­ti­a­tions between the Amer­i­can del­e­ga­tion led by the US pres­i­den­tial envoy John Cole and the Belaru­sian gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties. Among those released, there were Mary­na Zolata­va, the Edi­tor-in-Chief of TUT.BY News Por­tal, which was closed down by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, who spent four and a half years in prison, as well as BAJ mem­bers Ales Biali­ats­ki (Nobel Peace Prize lau­re­ate) and Ali­ak­san­dr Fiadu­ta. All those released were forcibly deport­ed from Belarus.

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, 28 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives remained behind bars as of Decem­ber 31, 2025.

Read the full electronic bulletin “Media in Belarus” for October-December 2025 here.