Latvian court decision revives hopes for Belarusian-language public broadcasting on LSM+

The board of the Lat­vian pub­lic news out­let LSM devel­oped strate­gic pri­or­i­ties for 2026–2029 in the sum­mer of 2025. Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment, con­tent in for­eign lan­guages, such as Eng­lish, Russ­ian, and Ukrain­ian, should only be cre­at­ed and dis­trib­uted in a dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment. The Belaru­sian-lan­guage ver­sion of the web­site was only avail­able until the end of 2025.

Radzivon Biahli­ak, chair­man of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Belaru­sians in Latvia Supol­ka, dis­cussed the sit­u­a­tion that has devel­oped this year, the loss­es suf­fered by the Belaru­sian and Lat­vian media land­scapes as a whole, and the prospects for resum­ing Belaru­sian-lan­guage work at LSM.

Current cooperation

In the fall, LSM board chair Bai­ba Zuzena, in response to BAJ, promised to “con­tin­ue coop­er­a­tion with Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and the nation­al dias­po­ra.” Is this coop­er­a­tion hap­pen­ing in prac­tice?

Yes, the jour­nal­ists have remained employed. And this can be con­sid­ered the main result of our advo­ca­cy, because, for exam­ple, the Pol­ish sec­tion com­plete­ly left the por­tal. The Belaru­sian section’s archive has also been pre­served via a direct link — Bel.LSM.lv.

Since the begin­ning of the year, mate­ri­als have reg­u­lar­ly appeared cov­er­ing both dias­po­ra life and relat­ed events — for exam­ple, the recent con­cert by Lavon Vol­s­ki and the fifth anniver­sary of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Belaru­sians in Latvia Supol­ka. There is also an op-ed about Belarus.

Obvious losses

And yet, is the clo­sure of the specif­i­cal­ly Belaru­sian sec­tion of LSM+ notice­able for the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra?

Absolute­ly. Latvia has great respect for its lan­guage, and the pres­ence of Belaru­sian on the state news out­let was a means of our dis­tinct iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and sep­a­ra­tion from the Russ­ian dias­po­ra.

I’ll list the neg­a­tive points. First, due to edi­to­r­i­al changes, the Belaru­sian-speak­ing audi­ence was forced to switch to Russ­ian.

Sec­ond, when a sep­a­rate Belaru­sian sec­tion exist­ed, thanks to the efforts of for­mer edi­tor Ali­ak­san­dr Kras­nit­s­ki, our jour­nal­ists’ arti­cles were addi­tion­al­ly trans­lat­ed into Russ­ian and Lat­vian. Now they are pub­lished almost exclu­sive­ly in Russ­ian, lead­ing to a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the over­all audi­ence.

The num­bers speak for them­selves: the Lat­vian-speak­ing audi­ence (LSM.lv) accounts for 70–75% of users (400–550 thou­sand), while the Russ­ian-speak­ing audi­ence accounts for just 20–22% (120–160 thou­sand). The lack of Lat­vian trans­la­tions effec­tive­ly iso­lates reg­u­lar Belaru­sian top­ics from the major­i­ty of soci­ety.

Information security hasn’t improved

Back in fall 2025, con­cerns were expressed that the clo­sure could affect Latvia’s own infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty. How do you assess this risk now?

This is a very rel­e­vant ques­tion for Latvia. Despite the Belaru­sian regime’s com­plic­i­ty in aggres­sion, a 2025 poll showed 33% of Latvi­a’s res­i­dents view Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka pos­i­tive­ly. 30% have a clear­ly neg­a­tive posi­tion, while 37% abstained, which can be inter­pret­ed as a hid­den opin­ion, since sup­port­ing a dic­ta­tor is not main­stream in the coun­try.

We can see evi­dence of Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da on social media. For exam­ple, the “Mov­ing to Belarus for Per­ma­nent Res­i­dence” group has 19,000 mem­bers, and “Belaru­sians of Latvia” has 25,000. Accord­ing to Bel­stat, Lat­vian cit­i­zens are the sec­ond largest group of tourists to vis­it Belarus, behind only Rus­sians.

Peo­ple are not deterred even by the sav­age prison sen­tences received by Dzmit­ry Mikhailau and Ala Sakalen­ka on fab­ri­cat­ed charges. The Lat­vian For­eign Ministry’s con­stant “direct” warn­ings don’t work. It is pre­cise­ly Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists who, through their expe­ri­ence, could con­vey the real sit­u­a­tion and show the work­ings of the repres­sive machine from the inside.

The recent news about Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da being broad­cast on the fre­quen­cies of the defunct Russ­ian-lan­guage radio sta­tion LR4 — where Radio Belarus began broad­cast­ing instead of Kul­tura Radio, increas­ing the sig­nal pow­er by four­fold — once again high­lights the impor­tance of infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty.

Restoring the Belarusian language to the media landscape

How does Supol­ka assess the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with Belaru­sian pres­ence in Latvia’s media land­scape? Are there any plans or projects?

We have received sup­port at the high­est lev­el — from the Cab­i­net for Nation­al Revival under Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s Office, as well as from the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists. Many thanks to Lat­vian politi­cians who under­stand the need for broad­cast­ing in nation­al minor­i­ty lan­guages.

Last week, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court issued a deci­sion call­ing on leg­is­la­tors to review exist­ing reg­u­la­tions.

The doc­u­ment states: “The scope of the state’s oblig­a­tions with respect to ensur­ing the rights of nation­al minori­ties depends on the actu­al sit­u­a­tion of a par­tic­u­lar nation­al minor­i­ty in the state, e.g., the num­ber of per­sons belong­ing to it, the spread of the lan­guage, the acces­si­bil­i­ty of media, the wish and abil­i­ty to inde­pen­dent­ly ensure access to infor­ma­tion in its lan­guage, as well as oth­er cir­cum­stances.

Fur­ther­more, in ful­fill­ing the state’s oblig­a­tion to facil­i­tate the access of such nation­al minori­ties to pub­lic media it must be assessed whether the respec­tive nation­al minori­ties have access to mass media in their own lan­guage.”

The Saeima Legal Bureau also spoke in sup­port of minor­i­ty lan­guages, not­ing that pub­lic media con­tent in these lan­guages serves as an alter­na­tive to the Russ­ian media land­scape, which con­tains pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion.

This gives us a chance to restore the Belaru­sian lan­guage to the news por­tal. We already raised this issue dur­ing Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s vis­it to Riga before she met with Pres­i­dent Edgars Rinkēvičs and deputies of the demo­c­ra­t­ic Belarus sup­port group.

Belaru­sians are the third-largest nation­al minor­i­ty in Latvia, tra­di­tion­al­ly liv­ing in the south­ern regions. And while the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court now rec­og­nizes Russ­ian in Latvia as “self-suf­fi­cient,” Belaru­sian is under threat of dis­ap­pear­ing, grad­u­al­ly being replaced by Russ­ian. It has also come under severe repres­sion in Belarus itself.

We need to con­tin­ue our work by telling the truth about the real state of the Belaru­sian lan­guage and cul­ture in our coun­try. This would be sup­port­ed by orga­niz­ing the exhi­bi­tion Belarus: Voic­es of Banned Books and by con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sions with law­mak­ers on ways to sup­port and pre­serve the Belaru­sian lan­guage in Latvi­a’s infor­ma­tion and cul­tur­al space.