E‑newsletter: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS No.2 (83) 2026

Mass media in Belarus in Jan­u­ary – March 2026. Review. Down­load PDF.

Meet­ing of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Vil­nius. Kat­siary­na Andreye­va. March 19, 2026. Pho­to: Bel­sat

28 media work­ers remained impris­oned in Belarus at the begin­ning of 2026.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties announced the release of 250 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers from cus­tody fol­low­ing the US Spe­cial Envoy John Cole’s vis­it to Min­sk on March 19, 2026. Fif­teen peo­ple were deport­ed to Lithua­nia on the same day, while the rest of the released polit­i­cal pris­on­ers remained in Belarus. The list of deport­ed indi­vid­u­als includ­ed a jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Bakhvala­va (Andreye­va) and a blog­ger Eduard Palchys. Media work­ers Aleh Supruniuk, Ali­ak­san­dr Marchanka, Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va, and Anton Kazel­s­ki were released from cus­tody, too.

Mean­while, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued to hand down severe polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed sen­tences to oth­er jour­nal­ists. In par­tic­u­lar, six peo­ple were con­vict­ed with­in a three-month peri­od.

Also, there con­tin­ued sys­tem­at­ic crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of the exiled media work­ers ‘in absen­tia’, includ­ing the indi­vid­u­als, who had been released from prison and deport­ed from their native coun­try.

A new form of per­se­cu­tion emerged with­in the peri­od under review. Although some inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists were released from cus­tody and deport­ed from Belarus with their doc­u­ments, they noticed that their Belaru­sian pass­ports got can­celled lat­er.

More­over, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued to apply the ‘anti-extrem­ist’ leg­is­la­tion, in order to restrict free­dom of expres­sion. Thus, numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions from Belaru­sian and for­eign sources were declared ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ (e.g., the Web-con­tent of Russ­ian BBC Ser­vice) in Jan­u­ary – March 2026.

A new bill has been adopt­ed in Belarus that allows the state-owned TV chan­nels to vio­late copy­right. Thus, they can use music with­out receiv­ing the copy­right hold­ers’ con­sent while cre­at­ing cer­tain pro­grams.

Criminal prosecution. Cases of detention in Belarus

The Brest Region­al Court announced a ver­dict against Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich and Andrei Pakalen­ka, the for­mer top man­agers of BAR24 News Por­tal (for­mer­ly known as the “Intex-Press” inde­pen­dent news­pa­per) on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2026.

The court sen­tenced Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich to 14 years in prison and a fine of 135,000 Belaru­sian rubles (approx. USD 48,900). Andrei Pakalen­ka was sen­tenced to 12 years in prison and a fine of 45,000 Belaru­sian rubles (approx. USD 16,300). Both media work­ers were charged for the alleged ‘high trea­son’ (Arti­cle 356 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code). Also, it has been report­ed that a huge fine of about 200,000 Belaru­sian rubles was imposed on them. The nature of these charges remains unknown.

The Min­sk City Court con­vict­ed a musi­cian and radio host Aleh Khamen­ka under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code (‘facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ty’) on March 4, 2026. The cul­tur­al work­er was found guilty of con­stant coop­er­a­tion with the edi­to­r­i­al team of Belaru­sian ‘Radio Racy­ja’, based out of Poland, and sen­tenced to three years in prison.

On March 6,2026, a jour­nal­ist Pavel Dabravol­sky was sen­tenced to 9 years in a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty prison under Arti­cle 356 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code (‘high trea­son’). The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists has been updat­ed that the crim­i­nal charges were relat­ed to Dabravol­sky’s jour­nal­is­tic pub­li­ca­tions. He pre­vi­ous­ly worked for both Belaru­sian and for­eign media out­lets, includ­ing the NV.ua mag­a­zine (Ukraine). Dabravol­sky was detained in Min­sk just a few months after return­ing home from abroad on Jan­u­ary 22, 2025.

A jour­nal­ist Tsi­na Palyn­skaya and her daugh­ter Marhary­ta Rabi­novich were sen­tenced to two years of impris­on­ment each under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (‘cre­ation of an extrem­ist group­ing or par­tic­i­pa­tion in it’).

Both of them were detained in May 2025 and kept in cus­tody since then. Palyn­skaya’s hus­band, writer Ales Palyn­sky, passed away while his spouse was kept behind bars.

Report­ed­ly, the crim­i­nal case may be relat­ed to the label­ing of Prof. Andrei Vardamatsky’s Belaru­sian Ana­lyt­i­cal Work­shop as an ‘extrem­ist group­ing’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. This orga­ni­za­tion con­duct­ed soci­o­log­i­cal sur­veys among Belaru­sian cit­i­zens.

As it was report­ed in March 2026, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist and media ana­lyst Vol­ha Khar­la­ma­va had been detained on charges of ‘high trea­son’ (Arti­cle 356 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code) in June 2025.

She used to com­ment on events in Belarus and the world for var­i­ous Belaru­sian and for­eign media out­lets before her arrest. Also, pre­vi­ous­ly she used to work as an ana­lyst for the Media IQ project. Vol­ha Khar­la­ma­va is fac­ing a sen­tence of 7 to 15 years in prison.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion ‘in absen­tia’ against the media work­ers in exile. Also, their rel­a­tives were harassed by law enforce­ment agen­cies in Belarus.

Thus, Ali­ak­sei Karpe­ka, a jour­nal­ist of ‘Buro Media’ inves­tiga­tive pub­li­ca­tion learnt that he had been charged under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code (‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist group­ing’).

Anoth­er crim­i­nal case was filed against a blog­ger and a his­to­ry TV-show pre­sen­ter Kat­siary­na Vadanosa­va under Arti­cle 130–1 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code (‘reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazism, com­mit­ted by a group of indi­vid­u­als in pri­or con­spir­a­cy with the use of the Inter­net).

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties resumed crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion against the polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, who had been released from cus­tody due to diplo­mat­ic agree­ments. Thus, a new crim­i­nal case was filed against a blog­ger Miko­la Dzi­adok (a for­mer jour­nal­ist of ‘Novy Chas’ inde­pen­dent news­pa­per and an activist of the anar­chist move­ment).

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties start­ed sell­ing the exiled jour­nal­ists’ real estate in Belarus through auc­tions, in order to com­pen­sate for huge fines, which they imposed on the media work­ers in ‘absen­tia’ tri­als.

Thus, the exiled jour­nal­ist Uladz­imir Khilmanovich from Hrod­na learned that his apart­ment and coun­try house were put up for sale, fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion of ‘extrem­ism’.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties indulged in can­celling the Belaru­sian pass­ports of released polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, who were deport­ed with their per­son­al doc­u­ments.

Thus, the jour­nal­ist Viachaslau Laza­rau, blog­gers Dzmit­ry Kazlou and Eduard Palchys learnt at the end of March 2026 that the Belaru­sian author­i­ties had can­celled their pass­ports. The media work­ers were released and deport­ed from Belarus due to the assis­tance of the Unit­ed States.

Censorship

The author­i­ties con­tin­ued to restrict access to alter­na­tive sources of infor­ma­tion. Numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions in the Belaru­sian and for­eign media were rec­og­nized as ‘extrem­ist’ by them.

The Min­sk City Com­mis­sion for the Eval­u­a­tion of Sym­bols, Attrib­ut­es, and Infor­ma­tion Prod­ucts was estab­lished on March 19, 2026. (The cre­ation of this com­mis­sion was envis­aged in a respec­tive res­o­lu­tion of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of Belarus, adopt­ed in 2021. How­ev­er, it was only the Nation­al and Min­sk Region­al com­mis­sions that used to oper­ate in the Belaru­sian cap­i­tal ear­li­er.

Along with many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions, the con­tent of BBC Russ­ian Ser­vice, Novaya Gaze­ta Europe, and the pages of Radio Lib­er­ty | Belarus in Threads were includ­ed in the Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als on the basis of respec­tive court deci­sions.

The BBC press ser­vice issued a state­ment on this occa­sion. Among oth­er, it was empha­sized that its employ­ees are ‘deeply con­cerned about the con­se­quences that the inclu­sion of BBC Russ­ian Ser­vice on the list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als could have for the hun­dreds of thou­sands of Belaru­sians who turn to the BBC every week in search of the accu­rate and impar­tial infor­ma­tion they so des­per­ate­ly need.’

A video blog­ger Mak­sim Shukanau was includ­ed in the List of cit­i­zens of Belarus, for­eign cit­i­zens, and state­less indi­vid­u­als involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ties. The media work­er is serv­ing a four-year prison term at the moment.

Sev­er­al Belaru­sian web­sites, includ­ing inde­pen­dent media out­lets Nasha Niva, Reform.news, and Mediazona.Belarus, were hit by DDOS attacks on Free­dom Day, which is cel­e­brat­ed on March 25^th. It is not known who stood behind them. How­ev­er, these attacks were approved by the authors of pro­pa­gan­da Telegram chan­nels close to Belaru­sian secu­ri­ty forces on the morn­ing of March 25^th.

‘Kind hack­ers greet­ed the exiled extrem­ists on their hol­i­day’, the pro­pa­gan­dists not­ed. Also, they added that it was planned to make a num­ber of inde­pen­dent Web-resources go to rest.’ 

Governmental information policy

The state-owned mass media con­tin­ued their pro­pa­gan­dist activ­i­ty with­in the peri­od under review.

The ‘VoenTV’ TV chan­nel start­ed broad­cast­ing its pro­grams on Feb­ru­ary 23, 2026.

It was includ­ed in the list of nation­al TV-chan­nels.

Accord­ing to the ‘Voen TV’ First Deputy Direc­tor Kanstantsin Haharyn, ‘the new TV-chan­nel will ‘high­light non-stop the state poli­cies in the field of defense’, since ‘if the people’s con­scious­ness is not armed, any con­flict will be lost.’

As soon as Rus­sia moved to the next stage of block­ing Telegram and YouTube from Feb­ru­ary 10, 2026, some Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da media out­lets, such as, ‘SB.BY Belarus Today’, start­ed adver­tis­ing their pub­li­ca­tions in the Russ­ian mes­sen­ger ‘Max’.

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Belarus adopt­ed a draft law in the first read­ing that pro­vides for the free use of music which is nor­mal­ly sub­ject to appro­pri­ate manda­to­ry pay­ments with­out the con­sent of authors or copy­right hold­ers, when cre­at­ing cer­tain TV pro­grams by state-owned chan­nels that are part of the core pub­lic broad­cast­ing pack­age. Report­ed­ly, the per­mis­sion to vio­late copy­right was explained by the specifics of TV-pro­duc­tion that require prompt­ness.

In Feb­ru­ary 2026, the Tik­Tok pop­u­lar social media removed the account of Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­dist Ryhor Azaron­ak “Azarenok_napryamuyu”, which had more than 12 thou­sand sub­scribers. The rea­son for block­ing in sim­i­lar cas­es is usu­al­ly con­nect­ed to a vio­la­tion of com­mu­ni­ty rules, such as the incite­ment of hatred or shar­ing of mis­in­for­ma­tion.