Mass media in Belarus 2025

Mass media in Belarus 2025. Down­load PDF.

Iry­na Slau­nika­va after her release. Vil­nius, Sep­tem­ber 11, 2025. Pho­to: Bel­sat

Conditions for independent media sector activity in 2025

The Belarus gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued sys­tem­at­ic per­se­cu­tion of the inde­pen­dent press with­in the over­all con­text of its fight against dis­sent in 2025. The pres­sure on media work­ers inten­si­fied on the eve of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashenka’s elec­tion on Jan­u­ary 26, 2025 as well as in April 2025, when the few still oper­at­ing inde­pen­dent region­al media out­lets suf­fered from search­es and crack­downs in the gov­ern­men­tal pro­pa­gan­da chan­nels.

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and blog­gers in Belarus and abroad as well as pres­sure and harass­ment in rela­tion to them con­tin­ued with­in the peri­od under review.

At least 10 crim­i­nal con­vic­tions were pro­nounced to jour­nal­ists in 2025. The harsh­est sen­tence of 10 years in prison was hand­ed down to Dani­il Palian­s­ki. Crim­i­nal charges in absen­tia against Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists liv­ing abroad became wide­spread in 2025 with over 100 filed cas­es dur­ing the year. The Belarus author­i­ties exert­ed pres­sure on the forcibly exiled media work­ers through their rel­a­tives in Belarus.

A Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist faced an inci­dent of gen­der-based vio­lence online dur­ing a live broad­cast. Pub­lic actions of this kind threat­en the peace and safe­ty of inde­pen­dent female jour­nal­ists in gen­er­al.

As before, the so-called ‘fight against extrem­ism’ was wide­ly used to restrict free­dom of expres­sion and access to unof­fi­cial sources of infor­ma­tion. Thus, inde­pen­dent media projects were fur­ther des­ig­nat­ed as ‘extrem­ist groups,’ and large-scale pros­e­cu­tion for any form of inter­ac­tion with ‘extrem­ist’ con­tent con­tin­ued in the coun­try.

The man­i­fes­ta­tion of cen­sor­ship inten­si­fied at the state lev­el. It went beyond ‘coun­ter­ing extrem­ism’ and extend­ed to non-polit­i­cal top­ics. The num­ber of online media resources, which were blocked in the first five months of 2025 equaled to the num­ber of 3,150 blocked media resources in the whole year of 2024. It was for the first time that the Belaru­sian Web-users’ access to Tik Tok was blocked. At least for the first time, access to Tik­Tok for Belaru­sian users was blocked. In par­tic­u­lar, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties blocked access to the accounts of oppo­si­tion lead­ers Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya and Pavel Latush­ka.

The prac­tice of direct inter­ven­tion by secu­ri­ty agen­cies in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions was insti­tu­tion­al­ized in 2025. Thus, the KGB, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, and the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office were giv­en the author­i­ty to block web­sites and dis­con­nect users from com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the Inter­net reg­u­la­tion was imple­ment­ed by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion. And it was car­ried out pri­mar­i­ly with the use of admin­is­tra­tive mea­sures.

The pres­sure exert­ed by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties on exiled media out­lets and the dif­fi­cul­ties asso­ci­at­ed with relo­ca­tion are exac­er­bat­ed by eco­nom­ic prob­lems, includ­ing a crit­i­cal decline in adver­tis­ing rev­enue, sales, and oth­er income streams, on the one hand, and the simul­ta­ne­ous­ly increas­ing expens­es, on the oth­er hand. The prob­lem has sharply increased since the begin­ning of 2025, due to the reduc­tion in the US finan­cial sup­port for media projects around the world.

None of non-state socio-polit­i­cal peri­od­i­cal edi­tions that offer their read­ers alter­na­tive view­points to the offi­cial ones sur­vived in Belarus by the end of 2025. Along­side with the inde­pen­dent region­al media out­lets that were effec­tive­ly destroyed as a result of the gov­ern­men­tal repres­sions, some oth­er non-state region­al news­pa­pers seized their exis­tence in 2025. Thus, the ‘Viach­erni Mahilou’ news­pa­per ter­mi­nat­ed its oper­a­tion in Belarus. It was found­ed in 1992. After 2013, the peri­od­i­cal became noto­ri­ous for its homo­pho­bic and anti-Semit­ic arti­cles, which were reg­u­lar­ly pub­lished under Nadzeya Leuchanka’s edi­tor­ship). Anoth­er region­al news­pa­per, ‘Homan Barysaushchyny’, that cov­ered events in the city of Barysau (Min­sk region) and the sur­round­ing dis­trict since 1996 was closed down in 2025, too.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion inten­si­fied its efforts, aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing and ban­ning the dis­tri­b­u­tion of unwant­ed books, ‘which could harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus.’ 190 books were added to the list dur­ing the year of 2025. This trend demon­strates the desire of author­i­ties to lim­it the dis­sem­i­na­tion of ideas that dif­fer from offi­cial ide­o­log­i­cal guide­lines, includ­ing those con­cern­ing gen­der diver­si­ty and non-tra­di­tion­al mod­els of rela­tion­ships.

Pro­pa­gan­da and dis­cred­i­ta­tion of oppo­nents remained an inte­gral part of gov­ern­men­tal pol­i­cy in the media field. New pro­vi­sions ‘On the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion’ were adopt­ed on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2025. They for­mal­ly enshrined the pro­pa­gan­da func­tions of this gov­ern­ment agency. The out­come of a research study on pro-gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­dists’ activ­i­ties indi­cate the pres­ence of a “dig­i­tal author­i­tar­i­an trend” that means an over­sat­u­ra­tion of the media space with con­trolled nar­ra­tives.

Belarus ranked 166th in the 2025 World Press Free­dom Index, pub­lished by the Reporters With­out Bor­ders non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion, mov­ing one posi­tion upwards since the pre­vi­ous year. At the same time, the posi­tion of Belarus in the Free­dom on the Net 2025 rat­ing list, pub­lished by Free­dom House, fur­ther dete­ri­o­rat­ed, with a score of just 20 out of 100 (com­pared to the score of 22 a year before). Thus, Belarus con­firmed its sta­tus of a coun­try with the unfree inter­net.

28 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives remained behind bars as of Decem­ber 31, 2025 (to be com­pared to 45 media work­ers a year before).

A free­lance jour­nal­ist Dani­il Palian­s­ki was con­vict­ed of ‘high trea­son’ (Arti­cle 356 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code) in a closed tri­al and sen­tenced to 10 years of impris­on­ment.

The list of impris­oned media work­ers includes an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, sen­tenced to 13 years in prison for ‘high trea­son’, one of the TUT.by News Por­tal direc­tors Liud­mi­la Chek­ina, who is serv­ing a 12-year sen­tence, and the edi­tor of ‘The Belaru­sian Year­book’ Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va, who was sen­tenced to 10 years in prison. Like all oth­er polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, the jour­nal­ists were sub­ject­ed to pres­sure and inhu­mane treat­ment in 2025.

In par­tic­u­lar, it came to light that some polit­i­cal pris­on­ers were sub­ject­ed to severe pres­sure due to the atten­tion of inde­pen­dent media to their per­son­al­i­ties. This can be con­sid­ered a spe­cif­ic form of cen­sor­ship.

As a result of diplo­mat­ic efforts, tak­en by the US del­e­ga­tion led by the US President’s envoy John Cow­ell, 14 Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists were released from prison through­out the year of 2025. The list of lib­er­at­ed media work­ers includ­ed Andrei Kuznechyk, Ihar Karnei, Deputy Chair of Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Iry­na Slau­nika­va, Mikalai Dzi­adok, Pavel Mazhei­ka, Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich, Larysa Shchyrako­va, Yauhen Merkis, Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk, Viachaslau Laza­rau, Pavel Pad­abed, Ihar Losik, Mary­na Zolata­va, Ali­ak­san­dr Fiadu­ta as well as blog­gers Dzmit­ry Kazlou and Pavel Vinahradau.

It should be not­ed that most for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, includ­ing jour­nal­ists, were sent out of Belarus with­out doc­u­ments and deprived of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to choose their coun­try of res­i­dence. They were effec­tive­ly expelled from the ter­ri­to­ry of the Repub­lic of Belarus. The release of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists was made pos­si­ble due to the actions of inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty.

The activ­i­ty of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media was car­ried out in the forced exile.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists approved the Strat­e­gy of its activ­i­ties for 2025 – 2027 on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2025.

The strat­e­gy empha­sizes the need for the orga­ni­za­tion and all inde­pen­dent media to return to Belarus and get their legal activ­i­ty restored in the coun­try. Also, it empha­sizes the impor­tance of Belaru­sian-lan­guage and nation­al con­tent for pre­serv­ing the nation­al iden­ti­ty of tar­get audi­ences.

Changes in legislation

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties intro­duced amend­ments to the Guide­lines ‘On Reg­is­tra­tion of Domain Names in the Nation­al Domain Zone of Belarus’ on Jan­u­ary 17, 2025. The inno­va­tions allow the admin­is­tra­tor of the nation­al domain zone to can­cel the domains, which are ‘capa­ble of harm­ing the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus,’ while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly includ­ing them into a spe­cial ban list. The notion of caus­ing harm to nation­al inter­ests was not spec­i­fied any­where at that.

On Feb­ru­ary 17, 2025, Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka signed Law No. 61–3 “On Amend­ing the Codes on Crim­i­nal Lia­bil­i­ty Issues.” Over­all, this legal act sig­nif­i­cant­ly soft­ens the cur­rent crim­i­nal leg­is­la­tion. How­ev­er, this human­iza­tion does not address “anti-extrem­ism” and “anti-ter­ror­ism” arti­cles, nor does it address pro­vi­sions aimed at pro­tect­ing gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions and state sym­bols. These are the very pro­vi­sions, which are typ­i­cal­ly used for polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion that includes vio­la­tions of free­dom of expres­sion.

The law expands the list of crimes for which Belaru­sian cit­i­zens or state­less per­sons per­ma­nent­ly resid­ing in Belarus are sub­ject to crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty, even if these crimes were com­mit­ted abroad and regard­less of whether they are rec­og­nized as crimes in the coun­try where they were com­mit­ted.

In line with the adopt­ed amend­ments, the list of arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code with extrater­ri­to­r­i­al effect has been expand­ed. Among oth­ers, it includes:

• arti­cles 130–130–2 of the Crim­i­nal Code (incite­ment of hatred, reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazism, denial of the geno­cide of Belaru­sian peo­ple),
• ‘defama­tion’ arti­cles 367–369–1 (slan­der and insult against gov­ern­ment offi­cials and the pres­i­dent, dis­cred­i­ta­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus),
• arti­cle 370 (des­e­cra­tion of state sym­bols).

Obvi­ous­ly, these amend­ments for­mal­ize the prac­tice of pros­e­cut­ing pro-democ­ra­cy oppo­si­tion activists abroad for crit­i­cal state­ments. This kind of repres­sion was already imple­ment­ed through crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in absen­tia, i.e. the so-called “spe­cial pro­ceed­ings” pro­vid­ed for by the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Code, in the past. (They were intro­duced into the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Code in 2022.)

How­ev­er, the approved amend­ments may serve as addi­tion­al legal grounds for the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to pros­e­cute indi­vid­u­als for com­mit­ting cer­tain unde­sir­able actions abroad.

The law amends Arti­cle 367 of the Crim­i­nal Code (“Defama­tion of the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus”) and Arti­cle 368 (“Insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus”), extend­ing their appli­ca­tion not only for defam­ing and/or insult­ing the cur­rent head of state, but also for com­mit­ting such actions in rela­tion to an indi­vid­ual who has ceased to per­form the respec­tive offi­cial duties.

On June 10, 2025, the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of Belarus approved Res­o­lu­tion No. 319 “On Amend­ing the Belarus Council’s of Min­is­ters Res­o­lu­tions No.1256 of Decem­ber 30, 2014 and No. 575 of Octo­ber 12, 2021,” which changed the pro­ce­dure of pop­u­lat­ing the lists of indi­vid­u­als and legal enti­ties, asso­ci­at­ed with ter­ror­ist and extrem­ist activ­i­ty. The doc­u­ment was adopt­ed at the ini­tia­tive of the KGB, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, and the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office in order ‘to clar­i­fy the legal basis and uni­fy approach­es in the field of coun­ter­ing ter­ror­ism and extrem­ism.”

Accord­ing to the Belarus Law ‘On Coun­ter­ac­tion to Extrem­ism’, the notion of ‘extrem­ist activ­i­ty’ exceed­ed the actions, which were direct­ly spec­i­fied in the law, by includ­ing addi­tion­al­ly the crimes against pub­lic order, moral­i­ty, gov­er­nance, life and health, per­son­al free­dom, hon­or, dig­ni­ty, and prop­er­ty, pro­vid­ed that they were con­sid­ered to be ‘hate crimes’.

The Res­o­lu­tion of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters sig­nif­i­cant­ly broad­ens this approach. Thus, any arti­cles of the Spe­cial Part of the Crim­i­nal Code (includ­ing eco­nom­ic and tax-relat­ed arti­cles) can now be grounds for inclu­sion in the “list of indi­vid­u­als involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ty,” if the crime was com­mit­ted on the grounds of racial, nation­al, reli­gious, polit­i­cal, ide­o­log­i­cal hos­til­i­ty, or hos­til­i­ty toward a social group.

Thus, a legal basis has been cre­at­ed for clas­si­fy­ing vir­tu­al­ly any actions that might be con­sid­ered incom­pat­i­ble with gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy or asso­ci­at­ed with the expres­sion of dis­sent as ‘extrem­ist’ or ‘ter­ror­ist,’ fur­ther blur­ring the bound­aries of the rel­e­vant legal cat­e­gories.

On Sep­tem­ber 2, 2025, the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of Belarus approved Res­o­lu­tion No. 476 “On the Pro­ce­dure for Apply­ing Restric­tive Mea­sures.” The doc­u­ment estab­lish­es mech­a­nisms for restrict­ing access to Web-resources and ter­mi­nat­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and inter­net pro­vid­ing ser­vices. Under the new pro­ce­dure, the KGB, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, and the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office have been grant­ed the author­i­ty to block web­sites and dis­con­nect users from com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, it was only the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion that had such author­i­ty. Nowa­days, deci­sions to block access to Web-resources can be ground­ed both on the mon­i­tor­ing data and the out­come of an inves­ti­ga­tion or a crim­i­nal case. Restric­tions on access to Web-resources can be intro­duced for the peri­od of up to six months. If the iden­ti­fied legal vio­la­tions are resolved, access to the respec­tive Web-resources can be restored by a deci­sion of the agency that ini­ti­at­ed the block­ing.

While the reg­u­la­tion of Inter­net space was the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, it was pri­mar­i­ly admin­is­tra­tive in nature. The trans­fer of these pow­ers to the afore­men­tioned gov­ern­ment agen­cies insti­tu­tion­al­ized the prac­tice of direct inter­fer­ence of law enforce­ment agen­cies in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, effec­tive­ly remov­ing the bar­ri­er between crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and the reg­u­la­tion of access to infor­ma­tion.

On Sep­tem­ber 19, 2025, a new Reg­u­la­tion on the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus was approved. The list of main tasks of the Min­istry was expand­ed to include ‘infor­ma­tion sup­port of ide­o­log­i­cal work in the Repub­lic of Belarus, infor­ma­tion sup­port and facil­i­ta­tion of state pol­i­cy in the field of mass media and pub­lish­ing.”

A list of print media out­lets to be fund­ed from the Nation­al bud­get in 2026 was approved by Res­o­lu­tion No. 685 of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters dat­ed Novem­ber 28, 2025. 21 peri­od­i­cal edi­tions were includ­ed in the list. The num­ber of pub­li­ca­tions was the same as a year before. The min­is­te­r­i­al author­i­ties intro­duced only change to the list. The ‘Rod­naye Slo­va’ (‘Native Word’) month­ly schol­ar­ly and method­olog­i­cal mag­a­zine for the teach­ers of Belaru­sian lan­guage and lit­er­a­ture will be fund­ed from the state bud­get in 2026 instead of the children’s ‘Via­si­ol­ka’ (‘Rain­bow’) mag­a­zine, pub­lished in the Belaru­sian lan­guage.

The pro­ject­ed bud­get fund­ing of state media was slight­ly increased (by 9.7%) in accor­dance with the Law of the Repub­lic of Belarus “On the Nation­al Bud­get for 2026”, adopt­ed on Decem­ber 29, 2025,.

Violations of journalists’ and media rights

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion

The crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists con­tin­ued in Belarus. It was tar­get­ed at the media work­ers resid­ing in the coun­try and in the forced exile.

The Belaru­sian judi­cial sys­tem hand­ed down no less than 10 con­vic­tions in crim­i­nal cas­es against jour­nal­ists and 6 ver­dicts against blog­gers in 2025.

Ihar Ilyash, a jour­nal­ist and hus­band of polit­i­cal pris­on­er and jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Andreye­va was put on tri­al in Min­sk on Feb­ru­ary 21, 2025. He was sen­tenced to 4 years of impris­on­ment in a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty colony and a fine of 4,200 Belaru­sian rubles for the alleged ‘dis­cred­i­ta­tion of Belarus’ (arti­cle 369–1 of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code) and ‘facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ (arti­cle 361–4 of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code) on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2025.

A jour­nal­ist Pali­na Pitke­vich was sen­tenced to three years of impris­on­ment in Min­sk on March 7, 2025. She was accused of par­tic­i­pa­tion in an ‘extrem­ist group­ing,’ name­ly the ‘Media IQ’ online pub­li­ca­tion.

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.

A free­lance jour­nal­ist from Brest Dani­il Palian­s­ki was found guilty of ‘high trea­son’ (Arti­cle 356 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code) in a closed tri­al and sen­tenced to 10 years of impris­on­ment and a fine of about USD 7,135 on July 25, 2025. Due to the ‘con­fi­den­tial­i­ty’ of the tri­al, the actu­al essence of the charges remains unknown.

Anoth­er jour­nal­ist from Brest Aleh Suprun­yuk was sen­tenced to 3 years in prison for the alleged ‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist group­ing’ on August 8, 2025. He pre­vi­ous­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with a num­ber of inde­pen­dent media. Despite the fact that the jour­nal­ist has a dis­abil­i­ty, he was held in cus­tody for more than six months before tri­al.

On Octo­ber 31, 2025, Siarhei Chabot­s­ka, the edi­tor of s13.ru Hrod­na News Por­tal was sen­tenced to 3.5 years in a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty penal colony for the alleged ‘extrem­ism’ and ‘slan­der’ against Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka. (He had been held behind bars for over a year before the tri­al).

Report­ed­ly, four employ­ees of the BAR24 News Resource (Baranavichy, Brest region), which was cre­at­ed by the team of the Intex-Press for­mer inde­pen­dent region­al pub­li­ca­tion, labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ by Belaru­sian author­i­ties, were con­vict­ed under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (‘pro­mo­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ty’). Accord­ing­ly, four employ­ees of the Baranavichy-based News Resource Natal­lia Semi­anovich, Miki­ta Pia­trousky, Rus­lan Ravi­a­ka, and Liud­mi­la Zelianko­va were sen­tenced to restric­tion of lib­er­ty. 

The Belaru­sian judi­cial author­i­ties changed the sen­tence of for­mer edi­tor of “Novy Chas” news­pa­per Aksana Kolb on March 18, 2025. She was ini­tial­ly con­vict­ed of “arrang­ing and prepar­ing actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order or active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in them” in 2022. Her restric­tion of lib­er­ty was replaced with 1 year and 33 days in a penal colony. Oksana Kolb her­self is cur­rent­ly out­side Belarus.

New crim­i­nal cas­es were filed and more jour­nal­ists got detained in con­nec­tion with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in 2025.

Report­ed­ly, a jour­nal­ist Pavel Dabravol­s­ki has been accused of ‘high trea­son’ under Arti­cle 356 of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code in con­nec­tion with his pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties. (He pre­vi­ous­ly worked for both Belaru­sian and for­eign media out­lets, includ­ing the Ukrain­ian NV.ua mag­a­zine). The media work­er has been behind bars in the KGB deten­tion cen­ter since Jan­u­ary 2025. He faces up to 15 years in prison.  

The list of arrest­ed media work­ers also includ­ed a jour­nal­ist from Polatsk Tsi­na Palyn­skaya and her elder daugh­ter Marhary­ta Rabi­novich as well as Kiryl Paz­ni­ak and his daugh­ter Yan­i­na Paz­ni­ak. The lat­ter were arrest­ed on the day, when the ‘Plat­form 375’ YouTube chan­nel was labeled by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties as an ‘extrem­ist group­ing’.

The pros­e­cu­tion of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists liv­ing abroad in absen­tia for the alleged com­mit­ment of crim­i­nal offens­es became wide­spread in 2025. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) record­ed over 100 cas­es of this type of per­se­cu­tion with­in the peri­od under review.

The list of numer­ous affect­ed indi­vid­u­als includ­ed the Bel­sat TV employ­ees Vol­ha Starastsi­na (the sec­ond crim­i­nal case) and Yaraslau Stse­shyk. the for­mer employ­ees Siarhei Skulavets and Andrei Mialesh­ka as well as Iry­na Khalip, who works as a spe­cial cor­re­spon­dent for ‘Novaya Gaze­ta Europe’. (The lat­ter learned about the case from her par­ents in Min­sk after a search of their apart­ment by law enforce­ment offi­cers on Novem­ber 27, 2025.)

Polit­i­cal ana­lysts Ali­ak­san­dr Klask­ous­ki, Piotr Rud­k­ous­ki and Ali­ak­san­dr Frid­man as well as jour­nal­ists Tat­siana Kar­a­vianko­va, Glafi­ra Zhuk and Tat­siana Ashurke­vich were put on the Belarus / Rus­sia inter­state want­ed list in 2025. The media work­ers were clas­si­fied by the Belarus Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs as mem­bers of ‘Pozirk’ News Agency, labeled as an ‘extrem­ist group­ing.’

Blog­gers were sim­i­lar­ly pros­e­cut­ed on crim­i­nal charges.

On Jan­u­ary 28, 2025, the apart­ment of blog­ger Vadi­mati (Vadim Yer­mashuk) was searched and arrest­ed in Hrod­na in con­nec­tion with the ini­ti­a­tion of a new crim­i­nal case. The for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er fled Belarus after serv­ing a prison term. Report­ed­ly, he was put on the want­ed list in con­nec­tion with new charges under Arti­cles 361–4 (‘assis­tance to extrem­ist activ­i­ty’), 369 (‘insult­ing a gov­ern­ment offi­cial’) and 391 (‘insult­ing a judge’) of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code.

On Jan­u­ary 29, 2025, the Homiel Region­al Court sen­tenced a well-known blog­ger Vic­to­ryia Husar­a­va (“gusarev_ka”) to the restric­tion of lib­er­ty with­out send­ing her to an open cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty (“home con­fine­ment”). The blog­ger has more than 32,000 fol­low­ers on Insta­gram and more than 17,000 fol­low­ers on Tik­Tok. It is known that she was charged under Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘incite­ment to social hatred or hos­til­i­ty’). How­ev­er, the details of accu­sa­tions are unknown.

Ihar Shke­tau, the admin­is­tra­tor of ‘Pad­slukhana Hly­bokaye’ local pub­lic forum was sen­tenced to two years of restric­tion of lib­er­ty under the com­mon­ly applied Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘arrange­ment of group actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’) in the town­ship of Hly­bokaye, Vit­sieb­sk region on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2025.

Yauhen Star­avoitau, a local his­to­ri­an and a founder of ‘Mahilou Chron­i­cles’ blog from Klichau (Mahilou region) spent more than three months in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter. He was released in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber 2025 after being sen­tenced to restric­tion of lib­er­ty under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ty’).

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.

Pali­na Zyl, a blog­ger from Mazyr (Homiel region) was put on the want­ed list by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. How­ev­er, she stayed in Belarus until her arrest on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2025. On July 7, 2025, she was sen­tenced to one year of impris­on­ment in a gen­er­al-secu­ri­ty penal colony under the fre­quent­ly applied Arti­cle 342 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code for the alleged ‘active par­tic­i­pa­tion in actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order’.

Video blog­ger Kar­ali­na Kananovich announced on Octo­ber 5, 2025 that she had been sen­tenced to two and a half years of restric­tion of lib­er­ty under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code for the alleged ‘active par­tic­i­pa­tion in actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order.’ She was detained upon her arrival in Min­sk from Ams­ter­dam and spent 4 months in pre-tri­al cus­tody. She man­aged to flee Belarus after the ver­dict announce­ment. 

Video blog­ger Mak­sim Shukanau (‘Union Bell’ YouTube chan­nel) from Mazyr (Homiel region) was sen­tenced to 4 years of impris­on­ment in a penal colony on Novem­ber 11, 2025. He cov­ered polit­i­cal issues and the war in Ukraine. The blog­ger was hid­ing in deep under­ground in Belarus before Feb­ru­ary 2025. How­ev­er, as soon as his father was arrest­ed, he had to seek med­ical help sub­ject to seri­ous health issues. Con­se­quent­ly, he was detained togeth­er with his fiancée Pali­na Zyl.

Oth­er kinds of pres­sure on jour­nal­ists and mass media

As before, inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and media projects were sub­ject­ed to pros­e­cu­tion for pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists reg­is­tered 12 cas­es of deten­tion of jour­nal­ists and 34 search­es in office premis­es and at homes of Belaru­sian media work­ers in 2025.

Pres­sure on jour­nal­ists in Belarus rein­forced in April 2025.

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.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties put pres­sure on the exiled media work­ers, who were forced to flee their home coun­try and con­tin­ue to work abroad, through their rel­a­tives in Belarus.  

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.

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

The exiled free­lance jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­san­dr Hoishyk report­ed that police offi­cers had vis­it­ed his mother’s house in Sal­i­horsk, Min­sk region, look­ing for him as a ‘vicious extrem­ist.’

Pri­vate prop­er­ty of no less than five Belaru­sian media work­ers was arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in 2025.

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 the prac­tice of depriv­ing the media resources that were includ­ed in the Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als of their domain names. The trend start­ed in 2024. Thus, they man­aged to seize the domain name euroradio.by from the Euro­pean Radio for Belarus dur­ing the peri­od under review. The domain name was ini­tial­ly reg­is­tered by the Aus­tralian Europe Reg­istry com­pa­ny in 2009. It was the first case of the kind, since pre­vi­ous­ly the trend con­cerned the domain address­es, which were reg­is­tered in Belarus.

Report­ed­ly, the Belaru­sian spe­cial ser­vices arranged track­ing the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists through installing a spe­cial spy­ware appli­ca­tion on their cell phones.

The Dig­i­tal Secu­ri­ty Lab (DSL) of Reporters With­out Bor­ders (RSF), togeth­er with the East­ern Euro­pean orga­ni­za­tion RESIDENT.NGO, has dis­cov­ered pre­vi­ous­ly unknown soft­ware for Android phones, referred to as Res­i­dent­Bat, which has been used by the KGB of Belarus.

The spy­ware was found on a mobile phone of a jour­nal­ist, who had been inter­ro­gat­ed at the KGB.

It allows third par­ties to get access to the sen­si­tive data, such as a list of calls, micro­phone audio record­ings, SMS mes­sages, cor­re­spon­dence in encrypt­ed mes­sen­gers, and local files. The soft­ware is installed only as a result of phys­i­cal access to the device, which indi­cates the delib­er­ate and tar­get­ed use of track­ing tech­nolo­gies.

The old­est ver­sion of this spy­ware, which has ever been found, dates back to 2021, sug­gest­ing the appli­ca­tion has been in use for at least four years.

The Res­i­dent­Bat devel­op­er is still unknown. RSF hand­ed over the inves­ti­ga­tion report to the Google com­pa­ny that plans to send warn­ing about the ‘gov­ern­ment-sup­port­ed attack’ to the users, who have been rec­og­nized as the tar­get group of this spy­ing oper­a­tion. 

The use of anti-extremist legislation to restrict freedom of expression

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued to apply the anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion to pros­e­cute dis­si­dents. It was aimed both at the infor­ma­tion sources (media out­lets, blog­gers, peo­ple of Arts) and the con­sumers of media pro­duc­tion.

Accord­ing to BAJ, 15 media out­lets were labeled as ‘extrem­ist group­ings’ dur­ing the year of 2025. It was 4 more media out­lets than a year before and accounts for 23% of all 65 orga­ni­za­tions rec­og­nized as extrem­ist in 2025:

1. ‘Medi­a­zone. Belarus’ online media,
2. ‘About Vit­seb­sk’ Media project,
3. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Media Insti­tute ini­tia­tives,
4. Nastaunik.info,
5. ‘Buro Media’ jour­nal­ist project team (Ali­ak­san­dr Yara­she­vich, Vol­ha Alkhi­men­ka, Ali­ak­sei Karpe­ka, Kseniya Viaznikaut­sa­va),
6. ‘Radio 97’ Inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian Inter­net Radio Sta­tion,
7. ‘Chest­nOK’ YouTube-chan­nel, run by blog­gers Ali­ak­san­dr Ivulin and Yaraslau Pis­aren­ka,
8. ‘Par­tyzan­skaya Khvalia’ (‘Par­ti­san Wave’) YouTube-chan­nel,
9. ‘Zhizn Mali­na’ (‘Life-Rasp­ber­ry’) YouTube-chan­nel (pre­sen­ter Miki­ta Melka­zio­rau),
10. ‘Naviny Hrod­na i voblast­si’ (‘Hrod­na City and Region News’ Tik­Tok-account,
11. ‘Green Net­work’ Coali­tion of Ini­tia­tives, includ­ing the projects ‘Belarus Bee­hive’, ‘Green Por­tal’, and ‘Ecodom’,
12. ‘Belarus Tomor­row’ Stream­ing plat­form that unites Belaru­sian mass media, blog­gers, and experts,
13. ‘Plat­form 375’ YouTube-chan­nel,
14.  ‘Plan B’ media for inde­pen­dent cre­ators,
15.  ‘Radio Pla­to’ Inter­net Radio Sta­tion

Any inter­ac­tion with media out­lets des­ig­nat­ed as ‘extrem­ist groups’ can lead to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. Thus, e.g., a jour­nal­ist Andrei Mialesh­ka, who resides in the forced exile in Poland, learned of a crim­i­nal case against him on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025. Crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion offi­cers informed Mialeshka’s rel­a­tives that it was relat­ed to two inter­views the jour­nal­ist gave in 2023 and 2024 to some media out­lets, which were des­ig­nat­ed as an ‘extrem­ist group’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties.

The crim­i­nal­ly charged mil­i­tary ana­lyst and blog­ger Andrei Parot­nikau, jour­nal­ists Vol­ha Radzivon­a­va, Pali­na Pitke­vich, Aleh Supruniuk, Siarhei Chabot­s­ka, Ihar Ilyash, Natal­lia Semi­anovich, Miki­ta Pia­trous­ki, Rus­lan Revi­a­ka, Liud­mi­la Zelianko­va, the admin­is­tra­tor of ‘Pad­slukhana Hly­bokaye’ local pub­lic forum Ihar Shke­tau, blog­gers Anton Matol­ka,  Rus­lan Lin­nik, who was con­vict­ed again after four years of impris­on­ment, and Siarhei Bias­palau were includ­ed in the List of Cit­i­zens of the Repub­lic of Belarus, For­eign Cit­i­zens and State­less Per­sons Involved in Extrem­ist Activ­i­ties. The lat­ter was also includ­ed in the list of ‘ter­ror­ists’, com­piled by the KGB.

The KGB includ­ed the head of ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel Ali­na Koushyk in the ‘List of Orga­ni­za­tions and Indi­vid­u­als, Relat­ed to Ter­ror­ist Activ­i­ties.’ It is con­nect­ed to the fact that she used to have rela­tion to the Unit­ed Tran­si­tion­al Cab­i­net of Belarus, which was labeled by the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tor General’s office as ‘a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion’ on July 9, 2025.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus con­tin­ued the trend of includ­ing mul­ti­ple accounts of media projects and media fig­ures with alter­na­tive to the offi­cial points of view in the Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als, fol­low­ing the respec­tive court deci­sions.

The pro­ce­dure for rec­og­niz­ing pub­li­ca­tions as ‘extrem­ist’ resem­bled a ‘judi­cial con­vey­or belt,’ where a sin­gle court deci­sion could ban dozens of media resources at once.

The list was expand­ed by 2,186 mate­ri­als in 2025. (As of Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, it con­tained a total of 9,258 ‘extrem­ist’ pub­li­ca­tions.)

Accord­ing to Human Con­stan­ta, more than 85% of mate­ri­als includ­ed in the list were deemed ‘extrem­ist’ sole­ly on the grounds relat­ed to their polit­i­cal con­tent, rather than con­tain­ing calls for vio­lence or oth­er social­ly dan­ger­ous activ­i­ty.

A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the so-called ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ con­sists of var­i­ous accounts of inde­pen­dent media resources, as well as per­son­al pages of jour­nal­ists and blog­gers on social media. The BAJ Deputy Chair­per­son Barys Haretski’s Insta­gram account, the ‘Euro­ra­dio-Belarus News’ com­mu­ni­ty on the ‘Odnok­lass­ni­ki’ social media, the account of ‘Zerka­lo’ online pub­li­ca­tion on Threads, the late blog­ger Miki­ta Melkaziorau’s ‘Life-Rasp­ber­ry’ YouTube chan­nel, the social media accounts of the forcibly exiled blog­ger Ali­ak­san­dra Khanevich, 73, and oth­er accounts. Their dis­tri­b­u­tion is pros­e­cut­ed under the pro­vi­sions of the Belarus Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es.

In addi­tion to Belaru­sian inter­net sources, a num­ber of Telegram chan­nels broad­cast­ing news from Ukraine were includ­ed in the dis­tri­b­u­tion ban list, ‘Delfi Lithua­nia’ YouTube chan­nel (DELFI.lt News Web­site has been blocked for access in Belarus since 2023), the Telegram chan­nel, asso­ci­at­ed with a mil­i­tary ana­lyst and blog­ger Yigal Levin from Israel, who did not com­ment on events in Belarus at all, the social media accounts of Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ist Dmit­ry Gor­don and Russ­ian jour­nal­ists Ilya Var­lam­ov and Alek­san­dr Nev­zorov.

The con­tent of ‘Abazhur’ mag­a­zine No. 3 (124), 2018 was labeled as ‘extrem­ist media prod­uct’ in the first quar­ter of 2025. It was pub­lished by the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists before its liq­ui­da­tion by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. Most of the pub­li­ca­tions in this issue cov­ered the top­ic of per­se­cu­tion of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media work­ers for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

‘The Hand­book for Belaru­sian Jour­nal­ist’ (1999) by Prze­mys­law Hen­ryk and Vintsuk Via­chor­ka, which was ded­i­cat­ed to the top­ic of adapt­ing the West­ern stan­dards of jour­nal­ism to the Belaru­sian real­i­ties, and “Where there is no dark­ness: Radio Svabo­da” (2021) — a chron­i­cle of the activ­i­ties of the Belaru­sian Ser­vice of Radio Lib­er­ty by Ales Razanau were banned for dis­tri­b­u­tion, too.

As before, the users of infor­ma­tion that was labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ con­tent by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties were brought to admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty. (In fact, it could be any infor­ma­tion dif­fer­ent from the offi­cial point of view.)

It is impos­si­ble to obtain accu­rate data on the cas­es of pros­e­cu­tion on ‘anti-extrem­ist’ grounds, since access to the data­base of court deci­sions and the sched­ule of court ses­sions on the web­site of the Supreme Court is lim­it­ed. How­ev­er, it is still pos­si­ble to speak of numer­ous cas­es of pros­e­cu­tion for ‘dis­sem­i­na­tion, pro­duc­tion, stor­age, trans­porta­tion of infor­ma­tion prod­ucts con­tain­ing calls for extrem­ist activ­i­ty or pro­mot­ing such activ­i­ty’ under Arti­cle 19.11 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es, which is pun­ish­able by fines, forced labor for pub­lic pur­pos­es, or admin­is­tra­tive arrest for up to 15 days.

The grounds for such per­se­cu­tion are expand­ing. Thus, in addi­tion to direct reposts on social media, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion includes sub­scrip­tions to Web-resources rec­og­nized as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ or ‘extrem­ist groups’, for­ward­ing links to them in per­son­al mes­sages, likes, and even traces in the Google search his­to­ry. Courts often order to con­fis­cate smart­phones or oth­er devices used to sub­scribe or repost ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ from the detained peo­ple, regard­ing them as ‘a tool, which was used for com­mit­ting an offense’.

Phone checks dur­ing bor­der con­trol have become a com­mon prac­tice when enter­ing or leav­ing Belarus. In cas­es of detec­tion of ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ on devices, peo­ple are detained for fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion.

Most detainees are pros­e­cut­ed for inter­act­ing with con­tent even before it has been labeled as ‘extrem­ist’, because such offens­es are con­sid­ered by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to be ongo­ing and they are not sub­ject to the stan­dard statute of lim­i­ta­tions for admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion (two months). In addi­tion, there is a prac­tice of draft­ing pro­to­cols for each sep­a­rate action with ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als.’ Thus, each like or repost rep­re­sents a sep­a­rate offense, which then allows courts to pun­ish peo­ple with arrests for 15 days vir­tu­al­ly an unlim­it­ed num­ber of times.

 Restriction of access to information by administrative measures. The state information policy

It can be stat­ed that cen­sor­ship has been insti­tu­tion­al­ized at the gov­ern­men­tal lev­el in Belarus. Along with cen­sor­ship, pro­pa­gan­da and dis­cred­it­ing of oppo­nents remained an inte­gral part of gov­ern­men­tal pol­i­cy in the media field in 2025.

The Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Marat Markau empha­sized the need for state cen­sor­ship in the media dur­ing a broad­cast on CTV on May 4, 2025. Among oth­er, he not­ed as fol­lows: ‘Cen­sor­ship is absolute­ly nec­es­sary, if we want the law to rule in any field, includ­ing the work in the media space.’ He called it ‘an essen­tial con­di­tion for the func­tion­ing of any state.’

 ‘Our oppo­nents con­tin­ue to cre­ate infor­ma­tion resources that will attempt to destroy the state,’ Markau added.

Addi­tion­al cen­sor­ship restric­tions were applied on the eve of the elec­tion day on Jan­u­ary 26, 2025.

Thus, the web­sites of ‘Mahilouskiya Vedamast­si’ region­al media hold­ing as well as a few state-owned dis­trict news­pa­pers in the Mahilou region either delet­ed pub­li­ca­tions about train­ing ses­sions for mem­bers of dis­trict elec­tion com­mis­sions or removed pho­tos from the arti­cles.

The ‘Shalom’ pro­gram that broad­casts the lis­ten­ers’ greet­ings to their friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers on “Zefir FM” radio sta­tion (Babruysk, Mahilou region), alleged­ly, ‘went on vaca­tion’ on the eve of the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. The media out­let had pre­vi­ous­ly been crit­i­cized by the offi­cial author­i­ties for broad­cast­ing con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sages to polit­i­cal pris­on­ers at the Babruysk penal colony.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties intro­duced changes to the Guide­lines ‘On Reg­is­tra­tion of Domain Names in the Nation­al Domain Zone of Belarus’ on Jan­u­ary 17, 2025. The inno­va­tions allow the admin­is­tra­tor of the nation­al domain zone to can­cel domains “capa­ble of harm­ing the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus”, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly enter­ing them into a spe­cial ban list. The notion of caus­ing harm to nation­al inter­ests was not spec­i­fied any­where at that.

Dur­ing the ‘pres­i­den­tial elec­tion’ on Jan­u­ary 26, 2025, there was reg­is­tered block­ing of access to web­sites in the Belaru­sian nation­al domain zone from abroad. Also, Belaru­sian Inter­net users’ abil­i­ty to make use of VPN ser­vices was lim­it­ed. 

The com­pa­ny hoster.by is the largest domain reg­is­trar in Belarus, an IT infra­struc­ture provider, host­ing more than 90% of Belaru­sian web­sites. The com­pa­ny announced in advance that it would restrict access to the host­ed web­sites from abroad from 10:00 a.m. on Jan­u­ary 25, 2025 to 11:59 p.m. on Jan­u­ary 27, 2025. This peri­od coin­cid­ed with the elec­tion of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka. The host­ing ser­vice provider explained these mea­sures by the alleged ‘threats to the media infra­struc­ture facil­i­ties and the infor­ma­tion, which is processed with their use.’

Web-users from Belarus encoun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties with the use of VPN ser­vices (in par­tic­u­lar, Pro­ton VPN, Nord­VPN, Tun­nel­Bear, VPN — Super Unlim­it­ed Proxy, X‑VPN, Plan­et VPN) and faced prob­lems with access to cer­tain for­eign web­sites on the morn­ing of Jan­u­ary 25, 2025.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties sent a let­ter of com­plaint to Google after the vot­ing day on Jan­u­ary 26, 2025. They accused the com­pa­ny of the alleged ‘inter­fer­ence in the elec­tion.’ Accord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Marat Markau, the com­plaints con­cerned ‘the com­plic­i­ty of Google in infor­ma­tion­al provo­ca­tions against Belarus and the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in the coun­try with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of for­ma­tions that were rec­og­nized by the court as extrem­ist in the Repub­lic of Belarus.’

He also stat­ed the need to cre­ate a repli­ca of Roskom­nad­zor in Belarus. (Among oth­er things, the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Ser­vice for Super­vi­sion in the Field of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nolo­gies and Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­lates media activ­i­ties.)

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 fight against the so-called ‘infor­ma­tion ene­my’ was also waged by the Belaru­sian region­al author­i­ties in 2025. Thus, e.g., the Vit­sieb­sk Region­al Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee planned to allo­cate 180,000 Belaru­sian rubles (approx­i­mate­ly $61,200) from the bud­get for ‘the media space mon­i­tor­ing and ana­lyt­i­cal ser­vices and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of infor­ma­tion injec­tions’ over the course of the year These ser­vices are sup­posed to include con­tent track­ing, main­te­nance of the Region­al Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee’s offi­cial media resources, and prepa­ra­tion of reg­u­lar mon­i­tor­ing reports.

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 Music Chan­nel’ that had broad­cast its TV pro­grams since 2002 for fail­ing to com­ply with unspec­i­fied ‘require­ments defined by the media leg­is­la­tion’ in May 2025. The lead­er­ship of the First Music Chan­nel took a deci­sion to ter­mi­nate its oper­a­tion from Sep­tem­ber 2, 2025. Con­se­quent­ly, the TV chan­nel was deprived of state reg­is­tra­tion.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties focused their atten­tion on the Tik­Tok in 2025. 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.

 On Sep­tem­ber 19, 2025, a new Reg­u­la­tion on the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus was approved that de-fac­to enshrined pro­pa­gan­dist func­tions of this gov­ern­men­tal agency. The list of main tasks of the Min­istry was expand­ed, includ­ing ‘infor­ma­tion sup­port of ide­o­log­i­cal work in the Repub­lic of Belarus, infor­ma­tion sup­port and facil­i­ta­tion of state pol­i­cy in the field of mass media and pub­lish­ing.”

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus accel­er­at­ed its efforts to iden­ti­fy and ban the ‘unwant­ed’ books in 2025.

On Sep­tem­ber 8, 2025, Deputy Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Dzia­n­is Yazier­s­ki not­ed dur­ing the live TV broad­cast that he hoped for the help of the pub­lic, who would be active and report on pub­li­ca­tions which should be includ­ed in the ‘List of print­ed pub­li­ca­tions con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion mes­sages and (or) mate­ri­als, which dis­tri­b­u­tion can harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus.’

Report­ed­ly, 190 books were includ­ed in the list of banned pub­li­ca­tions in 2025.

Then, they were removed from sale at the request of the pros­e­cu­tor’s office. The banned pub­li­ca­tions includ­ed his­tor­i­cal lit­er­a­ture that was crit­i­cal of the ‘offi­cial’ Belaru­sian ver­sion of his­to­ry (for exam­ple, Anne Apple­baum’s ‘GULAG: A His­to­ry of the Sovi­et Camps’), lit­er­a­ture on LGBTQ+ top­ics, sex­u­al themes, shock­ing and provoca­tive top­ics, as well as lit­er­a­ture about juve­nile issues.

The increase in the amount of banned lit­er­a­ture indi­cates a pol­i­cy aimed at lim­it­ing the dis­sem­i­na­tion of ideas that dif­fer from offi­cial ide­o­log­i­cal guide­lines and, in par­tic­u­lar, those relat­ed to gen­der diver­si­ty and non-tra­di­tion­al rela­tion­ship mod­els. It can be stat­ed that the author­i­ties are using the ban list of pub­li­ca­tions as an addi­tion­al tool of cen­sor­ship.

Ini­tial­ly, the reg­u­la­tion of Inter­net space was the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, and it was pri­mar­i­ly admin­is­tra­tive in nature.

How­ev­er, as soon as the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of Belarus approved Res­o­lu­tion No. 476 ‘On the Pro­ce­dure for Apply­ing Restric­tive Mea­sures’ on Sep­tem­ber 2, 2025, there was insti­tu­tion­al­ized the prac­tice of direct inter­fer­ence of law enforce­ment agen­cies in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions that effec­tive­ly removed the bar­ri­er between crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and the reg­u­la­tion of access to infor­ma­tion.

Under the new pro­ce­dure, the KGB, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, and the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office have been grant­ed the author­i­ty to block web­sites and dis­con­nect users from com­mu­ni­ca­tions (see more details in the CHANGES IN LEGISLATION chap­ter above).

Bit­ly, the world’s largest link short­en­ing ser­vice, was blocked in Belarus on Novem­ber 10, 2025. Users report­ed either SSL cer­tifi­cate errors or a stan­dard block­ing noti­fi­ca­tion issued by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus.

Although no offi­cial expla­na­tions were pro­vid­ed, the block­ing like­ly stemmed from the use of Bit­ly to dis­guise and dis­trib­ute links to the media resources, which were labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties.

A new ‘inclu­sive’ mech­a­nism of ide­o­log­i­cal con­trol under the for­mal guise of ‘feed­back col­lec­tion’ was cre­at­ed in Min­sk in 2025. Thus, Min­sk City Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ‘Min­sk-News’ state-run news agency announced the launch of ‘Ide­o­log­i­cal Inspec­tion’ chat­bot on Decem­ber 10, 2025. Belarus res­i­dents were invit­ed to use the chat­bot for flag­ging ‘prob­lem­at­ic issues in the ide­o­log­i­cal field,” such as ‘the unsat­is­fac­to­ry con­di­tion of state sym­bols, fakes and dis­tort­ed his­tor­i­cal facts,’ and ‘the dis­sem­i­na­tion of destruc­tive mate­ri­als.’ The chat cre­ators promised Web-users that their requests would be processed by ‘com­pe­tent gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies.’

One more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Belaru­sian state media sec­tor Anas­tasiya Benedy­siuk faced inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions in 2025. They were intro­duced in rela­tion to the pro­pa­gan­dist of Belaru­sian TV and Radio Com­pa­ny in accor­dance with the decree of the Pres­i­dent of Ukraine dat­ed April 11, 2025.

Benedy­siuk has been the anchor of anti-Ukrain­ian pro­pa­gan­dist shows on the Belaru­sian state TV since 2022.

International solidarity

On May 1, 2025, One Free Press Coali­tion that unites media orga­ni­za­tions all around the world pub­lished their annu­al ’10 Most Urgent’ list with the names of impris­oned jour­nal­ists world­wide who must be released with­out delay. Ihar Losik, a jour­nal­ist of Belaru­sian ser­vice of Radio Lib­er­ty was on the list among oth­er media work­ers this time. He had been behind bars for almost five years.

The ‘Narvesen’ retail chain from Nor­way in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nobel Peace Cen­ter cel­e­brat­ed World Press Free­dom Day on May 3, 2025. A news­pa­per issue was pub­lished that was com­posed entire­ly of arti­cles, which are banned in the respec­tive coun­tries. Belarus was rep­re­sent­ed by an excerpt from a jour­nal­ist inves­ti­ga­tion by the impris­oned media work­er Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, who wrote about for­mer Ukrain­ian riot police offi­cers, serv­ing the Lukashen­ka regime.

In August 2025, the Reporters With­out Bor­ders non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion pub­lished an online gallery of por­traits of 39 impris­oned Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists, who are the heroes of today’s Belarus. It was not­ed that Belarus is prob­a­bly the largest prison for inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in the world.

The Embassies of the Unit­ed King­dom, Ger­many, Latvia, Lithua­nia, Poland, Swe­den, and the EU Del­e­ga­tion to Belarus issued a joint state­ment in hon­or of the Inter­na­tion­al Day to End Impuni­ty for Crimes against Jour­nal­ists, cel­e­brat­ed on Novem­ber 2^nd. As mem­ber states of the Infor­mal Group of Friends on the Safe­ty of Jour­nal­ists, they addressed the OSCE, voic­ing the need for the release of impris­oned media rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Belarus.

At the same time, the Reporters With­out Bor­ders pub­lished a new list of ‘2025 Press Free­dom Preda­tors’. It includ­ed Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka among 34 indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions that accord­ing to the RSF ‘aggres­sive­ly attack jour­nal­ists and the right to infor­ma­tion’

Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya was named as the win­ner of the Trustees Award in Index on Censorship’s 2025 Free­dom of Expres­sion Awards. 

Speak­ing at the awards cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don on Novem­ber 19, 2025, Tsikhanouskaya ded­i­cat­ed the prize to the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in prison, who ‘sac­ri­ficed their free­dom for the right to speak the truth.’ She named Andrzej Pac­zobut, Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va) and her hus­band Ihar Ilyash, Liud­mi­la Chek­ina, Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, Mary­na Zolata­va, Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va, and Iry­na Zlobi­na, who is the wife of impris­oned media man­ag­er and for­mer deputy direc­tor of Bela­PAN News Agency Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau. Tsikhanouskaya men­tioned sep­a­rate­ly Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, who worked for Index on Cen­sor­ship in the past.

The Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in prison and in the forced exile received sev­er­al awards in 2025. Apart from the recog­ni­tion of their pro­fes­sion­al accom­plish­ments, the awards also demon­strate inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty with the media work­ers in the face of pres­sure and per­se­cu­tion.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and polit­i­cal pris­on­er Maria Kalesnika­va received the Gün­ter Wall­raff Prize for Press Free­dom and Human Rights for sig­nif­i­cant, long-stand­ing work on pro­tect­ing jour­nal­ists and free­dom of speech. The prize was pre­sent­ed by the Ini­tia­tive for News Enlight­en­ment in Cologne on May 9, 2025. The ini­tia­tive aims at draw­ing pub­lic atten­tion to the top­ics and dis­cours­es that are scarce­ly cov­ered by the inter­na­tion­al media.

The Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Cen­ter received one of Free Media Awards ‘for in-depth ana­lyt­i­cal report­ing and news-mak­ing’ in Ham­burg on Novem­ber 6, 2025. Over the past three years, the inves­ti­ga­tors have exposed cor­rup­tion and sanc­tions eva­sion schemes total­ing more than 1.5 bil­lion Euros. The Free Media Awards is a Ger­man Nor­we­gian prize for jour­nal­ists in East­ern and Cen­tral Europe. It was found­ed by the Fritt Ord foun­da­tion and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebe­lin und Gerd Bucerius foun­da­tion.

The for­mer­ly impris­oned on polit­i­cal grounds jour­nal­ist Larysa Shchyrako­va received the Free Media Award at the same time. The prize was award­ed to her ‘for coura­geous and inde­pen­dent work in Belarus’ in 2024. How­ev­er, the media work­er was in prison then.

The Free Media Awards web­site empha­sizes that Larysa Shchyrako­va became a pil­lar of sup­port for inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in the Homiel region and per­sis­tent­ly advo­cat­ed for the legal­iza­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ism in Belarus at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el.

The impris­oned jour­nal­ist and activist of the banned Union of Poles in Belarus Andrzej Pac­zobut was award­ed the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s 2025 Sakharov Prize For Free­dom of Thought along with the impris­oned Geor­gian jour­nal­ist Mzia Ama­glo­beli on Decem­ber 16, 2025.

Announc­ing the lau­re­ates, EP Pres­i­dent Rober­ta Met­so­la said: ‘By award­ing this year’s Sakharov Prize for Free­dom of Thought to Andrzej Pac­zobut from Belarus and Mzia Ama­glo­beli from Geor­gia, we hon­our two jour­nal­ists whose courage shines as a bea­con for all who refuse to be silenced. Both have paid a heavy price for speak­ing truth to pow­er, becom­ing sym­bols of the strug­gle for free­dom and democ­ra­cy. The Par­lia­ment stands with them, and with all those who con­tin­ue to demand free­dom.’

Pac­zobut was also award­ed the Order of the White Eagle by Pol­ish Pres­i­dent Karol Nawroc­ki in hon­or of Inde­pen­dence Day. This is the high­est state award in Poland.

Also, he was pre­sent­ed with the 2025 Human Rights Defend­er Award ‘for courage and per­se­ver­ance’ on the Inter­na­tion­al Human Rights Day, cel­e­brat­ed on Decem­ber 10^th. The award has been estab­lished by the West Pomeran­ian Voivode­ship of Poland.

The sixth cer­e­mo­ny of pre­sent­ing the ‘Hope of Free­dom’ award took place dur­ing the Lithuan­ian – Belaru­sian ‘Forum of Baltic Jour­nal­ists and Per­se­cut­ed Jour­nal­ists,’ held at the Seimas of Lithua­nia on Decem­ber 18, 2025. (The award was estab­lished in 2020.)

Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich, a for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er and edi­tor-in-chief of ‘Rehiyanal­naya Gaze­ta’ was announced as the lau­re­ate of the 2025 ‘Hope of Free­dom’ award. The region­al inde­pen­dent news­pa­per was pub­lished in Mal­adziech­na, Min­sk region.