E‑newsletter: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS No.2 (80) 2025

Sit­u­a­tion in Belarus mass media field: april-june 2025. Review. Down­load PDF.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists observed a new wave of repres­sion against jour­nal­ists and their fam­i­lies in Belarus in April – June 2025. It includ­ed the fol­low­ing trends:

• con­tin­u­a­tion of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of media work­ers. 2 jour­nal­ists and 2 blog­gers were crim­i­nal­ly charged with­in the peri­od under review,
• the increased pres­sure on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus as well as on the rel­a­tives of those media work­ers, who were forced to flee their home coun­try and con­tin­ue to work in exile. The region­al media out­lets that car­ried on oper­a­tion in Belarus were par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by search­es and harass­ment in the state pro­pa­gan­da media,
• the increased cen­sor­ship in the Belarus media field. Thus, the same num­ber of over 3,150 Web-resources were blocked for pub­lic access with­in the first five months of 2025 and dur­ing the entire year of 2024,
• the first reg­is­tered case of blocked access to the Tik­Tok social media for users from Belarus. It affect­ed the accounts of oppo­si­tion lead­ers Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya and Pavel Latush­ka.

37 media work­ers remain in prison in Belarus.

Ihar Karnei, a for­mer jour­nal­ist for ‘Radio Lib­er­ty’ was released from jail and tak­en out of Belarus due to diplo­mat­ic efforts of the Unit­ed States on June 21, 2025. 

The Belaru­sian judi­cial sys­tem hand­ed down 2 ver­dicts in crim­i­nal cas­es against jour­nal­ists and 2 ver­dicts against blog­gers with­in the peri­od under review.

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

Vol­ha Loi­ka and Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va, for­mer employ­ees of Tut.by News Por­tal were includ­ed in the list of ‘indi­vid­u­als involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ on April 26, 2025. This means that court ver­dicts against them were pro­nounced in absen­tia and that the respec­tive sen­tences came into force. Report­ed­ly, the tri­al began on Feb­ru­ary 4, 2025. How­ev­er, its details remain unknown, since the case hear­ing was held behind closed doors.

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 of 42,000 Belaru­sian rubles under sev­er­al arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code on May 2, 2025. 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).

Anton Matol­ka, a blog­ger and the founder of sev­er­al Telegram chan­nels, includ­ing the ‘Belaru­sian Hajun’ mon­i­tor­ing project, was sen­tenced in absen­tia to 20 years of impris­on­ment in a medi­um-secu­ri­ty penal colony, a fine of 84,000 Belaru­sian rubles (approx­i­mate­ly EUR 24,820), and con­fis­ca­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty. He was charged under 13 arti­cles of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code, includ­ing an attempt to seize pow­er, extrem­ism and trea­son.

At least 5 crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against jour­nal­ists in Belarus with­in the peri­od under review. Two media work­ers were tak­en into cus­tody, includ­ing Tsina Palyn­skaya from Polatsk, who was arrest­ed togeth­er with her eldest daugh­ter Marhary­ta, and an unnamed jour­nal­ist from Brest. The lat­ter was charged under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code for the alleged ‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist group­ing’ that referred to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

In April 2025, the Belaru­sian law enforce­ment agen­cies inten­si­fied their pres­sure on jour­nal­ists inside the coun­try as well as on the rel­a­tives of the exiled media work­ers, who were forced to flee their home coun­try and con­tin­ue to work abroad.

In most cas­es, the law enforce­ment agents vis­it­ed the exiled jour­nal­ists’ places of offi­cial reg­is­tra­tion in Belarus. Some­times, the vis­its were fol­lowed by search­es as part of crim­i­nal inves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dures. At least 7 search­es and 4 arrests took place in Belarus in April – June 2025.

Thus, the moth­er of exiled jour­nal­ist Valery Ruse­lik was inter­ro­gat­ed by law enforce­ment agents in Hrod­na. Also, the exiled jour­nal­ist Henadz Veratsinski’s apart­ment was sealed in Min­sk with­in the peri­od under review.

On May 28, 2025, the state-owned ANT TV chan­nel broad­cast a sto­ry that demon­strat­ed anoth­er wave of repres­sion against the few sur­vived pri­vate media out­lets, which are still oper­at­ing in the Belaru­sian regions. The claims were made against region­al media out­lets in con­nec­tion with their legit coop­er­a­tion with the Ger­man embassy this time. The video high­light­ed ‘Viach­erni Babruysk’ and the newspaper’s Edi­tor-in-chief Valiantsin Sysoi, babruisk.info online pub­li­ca­tion and its Edi­tor-in-chief Ana­tol Sanat­sen­ka, who was sen­tenced to 15 days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest on March 31, 2025), ‘Vol­naye Hly­bokaye’ newspaper’s for­mer Edi­tor-in-chief Uladz­imir Skra­batun, and ‘UzHo­rak’ news­pa­per from Hor­ki, Mahilou region.

The state pro­pa­gan­dists showed extracts from inter­ro­ga­tions of employ­ees of these region­al media out­lets regard­ing the busi­ness ser­vice con­tracts, which were alleged­ly con­clud­ed with the Ger­man embassy in Min­sk. The above-men­tioned news resources were unrea­son­ably labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ on sev­er­al occa­sions dur­ing the TV pro­gram at that. 

Mary­na Men­tuza­va, the pre­sen­ter of the ‘Ordi­nary Morn­ing’ show on YouTube, faced gen­der-based vio­lence online. Fake nude pho­tos with the jour­nal­ist from the account she alleged­ly cre­at­ed on the Porn­hub porn web­site were shown on a Telegram chan­nel, which is linked to the Belarus law enforce­ment agen­cies.

Appar­ent­ly, it was a planned action, since the same pics were sent to the jour­nal­ist from an unknown Telegram account direct­ly dur­ing a live broad­cast. It was stat­ed that she was set­ting a bad exam­ple for her daugh­ter at that. It is obvi­ous that such pub­lic actions affect the peace and safe­ty of inde­pen­dent female jour­nal­ists in gen­er­al.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued to apply the anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion to pros­e­cute inde­pen­dent media and jour­nal­ists

Five more media projects were labeled by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties as ‘extrem­ist group­ings’, includ­ing ‘a group of ‘Buro­Me­dia’ jour­nal­ist project’ (Ali­ak­san­dr Yara­she­vich, Vol­ha Alkhi­men­ka, Ali­ak­san­dr Karpe­ka, and Kseniya Viaznikout­sa­va), the ‘Radio 97’ Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent online radio sta­tion, as well as ‘Chest­nOK’ YouTube chan­nel, asso­ci­at­ed with blog­gers Ali­ak­san­dr Ivulin and Yaraslau Pis­aren­ka, and ‘Zhizn-mali­na’ YouTube chan­nel, asso­ci­at­ed with its pre­sen­ter Miki­ta Melka­zio­rau.

The crim­i­nal­ly charged mil­i­tary ana­lyst and blog­ger Andrei Parot­nikau, jour­nal­ist Pali­na Pitke­vich, and blog­ger Siarhei Bias­palau were includ­ed in the List of Cit­i­zens of the Repub­lic of Belarus, For­eign Cit­i­zens and State­less Per­sons Involved in Extrem­ist Activ­i­ties.

More­over, Bias­palau was added to the list of ‘ter­ror­ists’, which is com­piled by the KGB.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus con­tin­ued to expand the Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als. The fol­low­ing pub­li­ca­tions were added to the broad list of mate­ri­als with­in the peri­od under review: ‘The Hand­book for Belaru­sian Jour­nal­ist’, pub­lished in 1999, the social media accounts, asso­ci­at­ed with blog­ger Ali­ak­san­dra Khanevich, 73, as well as the Telegram chan­nel, asso­ci­at­ed with a mil­i­tary ana­lyst and blog­ger Yigal Levin from Israel, who did not com­ment on events in Belarus at all.

Cen­sor­ship restric­tions increased in the Belaru­sian media field

On June 6, 2025, the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus Marat Markau not­ed dur­ing the ‘Media Today: Focus on the Truth’ event in Homiel that the same num­ber of over 3,150 Web-resources had been blocked for pub­lic access with­in the first five months of 2025 and dur­ing the entire year of 2024. Also, accord­ing to him, 110 books were rec­og­nized as ‘harm­ful to our chil­dren,’ and the rel­e­vant work with the man­agers of mar­ket­places and dis­trib­u­tors of print­ed pro­duc­tion con­tin­ued.

Also, the Min­is­ter stat­ed that the infor­ma­tion war was ongo­ing and even get­ting more intense in Belarus. There­fore, accord­ing to him, ‘the state-owned media must be equipped with all kinds of weapons and tools on the infor­ma­tion front’.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus blocked access to the web­site of ‘Viach­erni Babruysk’ pri­vate region­al news­pa­per and issued a writ­ten warn­ing to the founder of the Belaru­sian ‘First Musi­cal Chan­nel’ TV-pro­gram for fail­ing to com­ply with unspec­i­fied ‘require­ments defined by the media leg­is­la­tion’ in May 2025.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties focused their atten­tion on the Tik­Tok dur­ing the peri­od under review. It is the most pop­u­lar social media in Belarus, owned by the ByteDance com­pa­ny from Chi­na.

The first case of blocked access to the Tik­Tok social media for users from Belarus was observed on June 11, 2025. It affect­ed the accounts of oppo­si­tion lead­ers Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya and Pavel Latush­ka. 

Ihar Tur, a pro­pa­gan­dist from the ANT TV Chan­nel dwelt upon the offi­cials’ response to the crit­i­cism on social media on June 16, 2025. Among oth­er things, he not­ed that the state would respond to ‘whin­ing’ by means of ‘reveal­ing decep­tion and hold­ing the com­plain­ers account­able.’ ‘It has already been proven that no one will suc­ceed in bend­ing the state with a scan­dal,’ he said. This state­ment was prob­a­bly made in response to the appear­ance of numer­ous immense­ly pop­u­lar videos on Tik­Tok, crit­i­ciz­ing socio-eco­nom­ic prob­lems in Belarus.