RFE/RL Belarus sends part of editorial team on leave amid funding freeze

The Belaru­sian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty (RFE/RL) has had to send part of its edi­to­r­i­al staff on leave fol­low­ing a fund­ing halt. Con­se­quent­ly, the vol­ume of con­tent on its plat­forms is expect­ed to drop notice­ably in the com­ing weeks.

Sev­er­al well-known projects—including Pik Svabody on the Svabo­da Pre­mi­um YouTube chan­nel, Explained with Hurnevich on the Radyjo Svabo­da YouTube chan­nel, as well as video pod­casts His­to­ry on Svabo­da and Where the World is Head­ing—will be put on hold.

On March 15, the U.S. Agency for Glob­al Media (USAGM) announced it would dis­con­tin­ue fund­ing for RFE/RL, just hours after Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump issued an exec­u­tive order. The order called for reduc­ing fund­ing for sev­en fed­er­al agen­cies, includ­ing USAGM, “to the max­i­mum extent con­sis­tent with applic­a­ble law.”

RFE/RL’s grants are approved annu­al­ly by the U.S. Con­gress, the country’s leg­isla­tive branch. Funds allo­cat­ed by Con­gress are dis­trib­uted through USAGM. RFE/RL Pres­i­dent and CEO Stephen Capus called the fund­ing cutoff—initiated by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, the exec­u­tive branch—an “uncon­sti­tu­tion­al action.”

On March 25, a dis­trict court in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., ruled in favor of RFE/RL, order­ing USAGM to halt its attempts to shut down the media cor­po­ra­tion.

The fol­low­ing day, on March 26, USAGM announced that it was rescind­ing its March 15 deci­sion to ter­mi­nate the con­gres­sion­al grant but empha­sized that it retained the right to sus­pend the grant in the future.

RFE/RL is now “await­ing offi­cial con­fir­ma­tion from USAGM regard­ing the rein­state­ment of grant fund­ing,” but no such con­fir­ma­tion has been received yet. As a result, the media orga­ni­za­tion cur­rent­ly lacks the nec­es­sary finan­cial resources to oper­ate at full capac­i­ty.