Journalist Yauheniya Kurlovich says she rejected KGB recruitment attempt

Kurlovich works with Malan­ka Media and does not con­ceal this fact — her pho­to­graph can even be found on the outlet’s home­page under the “Team” tab. But an unknown indi­vid­ual who iden­ti­fied him­self as a KGB offi­cer did not approach her direct­ly; instead, he called her via Telegram from her brother’s num­ber.

Yauheniya Kurlovich. Screen­shot from the Malan­ka Media web­site

Yauheniya refused to speak with him, and the con­ver­sa­tion then con­tin­ued in writ­ing — part of which the jour­nal­ist shared on her Face­book page. In this exchange, the unknown indi­vid­ual did not iden­ti­fy him­self by name, but claimed that her broth­er had seen his cre­den­tials.

“This hap­pened on Tues­day, July 21.

The con­ver­sa­tion was about the fact that I have now been out of Belarus for six years, and that this could eas­i­ly be reme­died with the KGB’s help. In exchange for the abil­i­ty to trav­el to Belarus freely, I was offered a Telegram cor­re­spon­dence arrange­ment: I would pass along cer­tain infor­ma­tion to them.

The man explained his deci­sion to con­tact me through my broth­er as con­cern for my moth­er — claim­ing he did not want to trou­ble some­one in poor health,” Yauheniya Kurlovich said.

The jour­nal­ist regards the use of her mother’s heart con­di­tion as an addi­tion­al ele­ment of moral pres­sure intend­ed to push her toward coop­er­a­tion.

She empha­sizes that since she left Belarus in June 2020, her par­ents — who remained in Min­sk — have not been left in peace.

“In 2022, they were tak­en in for an inter­view at the KGB, and the apart­ment was searched sev­er­al times — in 2022, 2023, and 2025. Also in 2025, I received a Face­book mes­sage from a per­son I didn’t know, who ref­er­enced a post I had writ­ten about how long I’d been away from Belarus and offered ‘assis­tance’ from ‘his orga­ni­za­tion.’ I polite­ly reject­ed. I don’t know what’s behind the cur­rent inter­est in me — I’m not a politi­cian, not an activist, not a pub­lic fig­ure. And there’s noth­ing to add beyond what we already put out: we pub­lish every­thing, and any­one who’s inter­est­ed can sim­ply sub­scribe and read. I do not want to speak with the KGB and I will not,” Yauheniya says.

The jour­nal­ist works with Malan­ka Media, which was des­ig­nat­ed an “extrem­ist enti­ty” by the Inte­ri­or Min­istry in Feb­ru­ary 2023. Yauheniya Kurlovich’s per­son­al Tik­Tok chan­nel has been des­ig­nat­ed “extrem­ist con­tent.”