Vitebsk Region

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Aivar Udrys was arrest­ed along with oth­er res­i­dents of Hly­bokaye dur­ing a raid by law enforce­ment offi­cials a few days ago. This was revealed in a video clip post­ed by the police on their Telegram chan­nel on 19 Sep­tem­ber.

The prosecutor’s office acknowl­edged that Lep­el­s­ki Krai had dis­trib­uted “extrem­ist” mate­ri­als. Still, the edi­to­r­i­al staff was not pun­ished, unlike non-state pub­li­ca­tions, which are usu­al­ly fined.

The Hly­bokaye Dis­trict Depart­ment of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee has opened a crim­i­nal case against Dzmit­ry Lupach. Accord­ing to the IC, he is sus­pect­ed of aid­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion, mean­ing his coop­er­a­tion with the Bel­sat TV chan­nel.

Ali­ak­san­dr Kornyshau, edi­tor of the online pub­li­ca­tion, has been resid­ing abroad since Novem­ber 2020. On May 23, law enforce­ment offi­cers searched for his place of reg­is­tra­tion in Vit­seb­sk. The apart­ment in ques­tion belongs to his par­ents, and the jour­nal­ist’s per­son­al belong­ings were not stored there.

The apart­ment of Vit­seb­sk free­lance jour­nal­ist Dzmit­ry Kaza­ke­vich will be con­fis­cat­ed for the ben­e­fit of the state and sold as “com­pen­sa­tion for dam­age caused by sanc­tions”. This was claimed by pro­pa­gan­dist Ihar Tur in a May 20 pro­gram on state-run All-Nation­al TV.