Journalist Ales Lubianchuk re-sentenced, added to “terrorist” list — and released

Jour­nal­ist Ales Lubianchuk has been con­vict­ed twice in Belarus. He spent near­ly three years behind bars on his first sen­tence, and near­ly a year on his sec­ond.

The KGB added the 38-year-old Lubianchuk to its list of “indi­vid­u­als con­nect­ed to ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.” This indi­cates that he has been con­vict­ed once again — this time under Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code, on charges of “incite­ment of hos­til­i­ty,” accord­ing to Khryst­siyan­skaya Viziya.

Lubianchuk was first arrest­ed in May 2022 and sen­tenced to three years in a cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty for “cre­at­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion.” The basis for the pros­e­cu­tion was his work as a video­g­ra­ph­er for inde­pen­dent media out­lets. He served his sen­tence in full at a cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty in Mahilou and was released in Jan­u­ary 2025.

In August 2025, Lubianchuk was arrest­ed again. He was released in May 2026.