E‑newsletter: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS No.3 (84) 2026

Mass media in Belarus in April – June 2026. Review. Down­load PDF.

Repres­sions against inde­pen­dent media rep­re­sen­ta­tives and severe restric­tions on access to infor­ma­tion con­tin­ued in Belarus in April-June 2026.

The release of jour­nal­ist Andrzej Pac­zobut after 5 years behind bars was a pos­i­tive devel­op­ment with­in the peri­od under review. The media work­er was released from prison on April 28, 2026.

At the same time, 21 media work­ers remained in prison in Belarus, and courts con­tin­ued to pro­nounce new sen­tences in crim­i­nal cas­es against jour­nal­ists. Transna­tion­al per­se­cu­tion of Belaru­sian exiled jour­nal­ists expand­ed in var­i­ous forms, includ­ing crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in absen­tia, pres­sure on rel­a­tives, can­cel­la­tion of Belaru­sian pass­ports, depri­va­tion of prop­er­ty in Belarus, and harass­ment in pro­pa­gan­da media. Among oth­er, the per­se­cu­tion trend was tar­get­ed at the jour­nal­ists, who had been released due to agree­ments with the US envoy’s mis­sions in Belarus.

As before, a broad wave of cen­sor­ship was based on anti-extrem­ism leg­is­la­tion. How­ev­er, the author­i­ties did not lim­it them­selves to block­ing access to inde­pen­dent media from Belarus in April – June 2026. They also resort­ed to reg­u­lar DDoS attacks. As a result of these attacks, the web­sites of six online news pub­li­ca­tions, as well as the web­site of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists were tem­porar­i­ly unavail­able to read­ers. The social media Threads and Tik­Tok start­ed gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty with the Belaru­sian audi­ence since recent­ly. Con­se­quent­ly, both social media attract­ed the unwant­ed atten­tion of Belaru­sian author­i­ties.

The state media con­tin­ued their aggres­sive pro­pa­gan­dist activ­i­ty under the peri­od under review. How­ev­er, they faced cer­tain com­pli­ca­tions at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el. Thus, the YouTube video host­ing ser­vice removed the chan­nels of three state media out­lets and the Belaru­sian Tele­graph Agency from their plat­form.

Criminal prosecution. Cases of detention in Belarus

Repres­sions against inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists con­tin­ued in Belarus. They includ­ed crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion and oth­er var­i­ous forms of pres­sure.

 Min­sk City Court pro­nounced ver­dicts to jour­nal­ist Kiryl Paz­ni­ak and his daugh­ter Yan­i­na Paz­ni­ak on June 26, 2026.

Kiryl Paz­ni­ak was sen­tenced to three and a half years in prison. The sen­tence of Yan­i­na is still unknown.

Both of them were accused of ‘cre­at­ing an extrem­ist group’ and ‘dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus’ (Arti­cles 361–1 and 369–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus).

It is worth men­tion­ing that Kiryl Paz­ni­ak cre­at­ed the ‘Plat­form 375’ YouTube chan­nel, which was labeled as an ‘extrem­ist group’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties in Sep­tem­ber 2025. Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian jus­tice, Yanina’s entire ‘fault’ lies in the fact that she start­ed this chan­nel on Tik­Tok.

Report­ed­ly, a jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­san­dr (Ales) Liu­bianchuk was con­vict­ed again with­in the peri­od under review. He was ini­tial­ly con­vict­ed in 2022 and released from cus­tody in Jan­u­ary 2025, hav­ing served his entire prison term.

The media work­er was put on tri­al in a new crim­i­nal case in March 2026. The jour­nal­ist was accused of ‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ (Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus) as well as ‘incit­ing hos­til­i­ty’ (Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus) for neg­a­tive com­ments about the author­i­ties this time.

The court sen­tenced Ales Liu­bianchuk to 4 years of impris­on­ment in a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty prison. How­ev­er, tak­ing into account the pre­vi­ous sen­tence served by the jour­nal­ist (as per Part 5 of Arti­cle 72 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus – ‘Assign­ment of pun­ish­ment bas­ing on the aggre­gate of crimes’) and the time spent by the media work­er behind bars in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter, he was released from cus­tody on May 12, 2026.

A pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ali­ak­san­dr Shyshko was detained at Min­sk Nation­al Air­port in April 2026. He had been liv­ing in the forced exile for a cou­ple of years.

A crim­i­nal case was filed against the jour­nal­ist in con­nec­tion with his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the cel­e­bra­tion of Free­dom Day abroad in 2023. Con­se­quent­ly, his apart­ment was searched.

It is known that the media work­er is charged under Arti­cle 361–3 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an armed con­flict on the ter­ri­to­ry of a for­eign state’) this time.

Transnational persecution

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued to put pres­sure on the rel­a­tives of jour­nal­ists work­ing in exile with­in the peri­od under review.

In par­tic­u­lar, the edi­to­r­i­al office of ‘Flagsh­tok’ media out­let (Homiel) that cov­ers region­al events and mon­i­tors mil­i­tary activ­i­ty on the Belaru­sian — Ukrain­ian bor­der report­ed that secu­ri­ty forces searched the homes of the par­ents of two peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the pub­li­ca­tion on May 19, 2026. They were told that ‘such actions will be con­tin­ued as soon as new pub­li­ca­tions are pub­lished on the Web-resource.’

Report­ed­ly, the fam­i­lies of jour­nal­ists from the Belaru­sian edi­to­r­i­al office of Deutsche Welle faced pres­sure, too. Quite a few of them were vis­it­ed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous law enforce­ment agen­cies with­in the peri­od under review.

On April 2, 2026, a pro­pa­gan­da pro­gram broad­cast on the ‘Stalich­naye Tele­bachan­nie’ (‘Cap­i­tal TV’, CTB) chan­nel report­ed on the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in absen­tia of the head of the Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Cen­ter Stanis­lau Ivashke­vich and six­teen oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of this media out­let.

At the same time, the employ­ees of anoth­er Belaru­sian inves­tiga­tive media project, Buro Media, were named as defen­dants under Arti­cles 361 (‘calls for sanc­tions’) and 361–1 (‘cre­ation of an extrem­ist group or par­tic­i­pa­tion in it’) of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code: Ali­ak­san­dr Yara­she­vich, Vol­ha Rat­mi­ra­va (Alkhimien­ka), Kseniya Viaznikout­sa­va and Ali­ak­sei Karpe­ka. The alleged ‘accom­plices’ includ­ed Russ­ian cit­i­zens – jour­nal­ists Ali­ak­san­dr Vas­trou, Kat­siary­na Mitrokhi­na, Mary­na Dul­ne­va and a Ukrain­ian cit­i­zen Mak­sim Sauchuk. A threat of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion was also announced against any­one who pro­vid­ed updates to the BIC chat­bot.

The tac­it can­cel­la­tion of pass­ports of Belaru­sian cit­i­zens who were released from jail and deport­ed from Belarus due to the US diplo­mat­ic efforts has become anoth­er form of transna­tion­al per­se­cu­tion. A jour­nal­ist Ihar Karnei faced this sit­u­a­tion in the peri­od under review.

Uladz­imir Khilmanovich from Hrod­na became the first jour­nal­ist to be deprived of real estate in Belarus. The author­i­ties auc­tioned off his apart­ment and sum­mer house in June 2026. The media work­er was sen­tenced in absen­tia for the alleged man­i­fes­ta­tion of ‘extrem­ism’ to 5 years in prison and a large fine.

Censorship

The so-called ‘extrem­ist’ crimes remained the main for­mal basis for the per­se­cu­tion of inde­pen­dent media sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tives and cen­sor­ship restric­tions.

Five inde­pen­dent media projects – ‘Novy Chas’, Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Cen­tre, ‘The Clock is Tick­ing’ YouTube Chan­nel, Reform.news as well as Proinfo.news Web-por­tal were includ­ed in the list of ‘extrem­ist group­ings’ by the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs with­in the peri­od under review. The lat­ter Web-resource is list­ed on the Ministry’s Web­site as ‘Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists,’ although it is not relat­ed to the orga­ni­za­tion.

Five impris­oned media work­ers were includ­ed in the list of indi­vid­u­als, who are alleged­ly ‘involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ties’: jour­nal­ist Tsi­na Palyn­skaya and her daugh­ter Marhary­ta Rabi­novich, radio host and musi­cian Aleh Khamen­ka, direc­tor of ‘Intex-Press’ Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich and his deputy Andrei Pakalen­ka.

The twice-con­vict­ed jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­san­dr (Ales) Liu­bianchuk was labeled as a ‘per­son relat­ed to the ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties with­in the peri­od under review.

A huge list of the alleged­ly ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ on the Web­site of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion was fur­ther sup­ple­ment­ed with new pub­li­ca­tions of Belaru­sian and for­eign inde­pen­dent media in April – June 2026. The pub­lic access to these mate­ri­als is sup­posed to be blocked by the Belaru­sian law-enforce­ment agen­cies. Also, their dis­tri­b­u­tion is sub­ject to admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty in Belarus.

In par­tic­u­lar, the Voice of Amer­i­ca Web­site and the Russ­ian Medi­a­zone online pub­li­ca­tion were added to the ‘Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als’ with­in the peri­od under review. Also, the Threads account of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists — baj.media.by was rec­og­nized by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties as ‘extrem­ist media pro­duc­tion’ on May 27, 2026.

There were reg­is­tered cas­es of repeat­ed inclu­sion of the same media resources in this list. Thus, the First Region web­site was includ­ed in it for the fourth time. (Its con­tent was ini­tial­ly labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties at the end of 2021.)

The ‘Roskom­nad­zor’ Russ­ian con­trol­ling author­i­ty blocked pub­lic access to the BAJ Web-site from the ter­ri­to­ry of Rus­sia on May 7, 2026.

Most prob­a­bly, the author­i­ty was con­cerned with the high pop­u­lar­i­ty of BAJ Web-pub­li­ca­tions on the meth­ods of bypass­ing cen­sor­ship and block­ing of online resources with the Russ­ian audi­ence.

Six Belaru­sian exiled media – ‘Zerka­lo’, Reform.news, Nasha Niva, Pozirk, Medi­a­zone. Belarus, Euro­pean Radio for Belarus as well as the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists were tar­get­ed by reg­u­lar DDoS-attacks with­in the peri­od under review. These cyber-attacks over­load Web­sites with a huge num­ber of Inter­net requests and make them inac­ces­si­ble to real Web-vis­i­tors.

The social media Threads and Tik­Tok start­ed gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty with the Belaru­sian audi­ence since recent­ly. Con­se­quent­ly, both social media attract­ed the unwant­ed atten­tion of Belaru­sian author­i­ties.

Thus, a well-known pro­pa­gan­dist Ihar Tur called the social media Threads ‘know­ing­ly hos­tile’ dur­ing a ‘Hrod­na Plus’ broad­cast. Also, he not­ed that the author­i­ties regard it as a poten­tial threat of a plat­form for get­ting Belaru­sians ready for the social unrest. At the same time, the pro­pa­gan­dist admit­ted that he uses provoca­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion meth­ods and con­ducts secret activ­i­ties on the Web with the use of fake accounts.

The Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee issued a pub­lic state­ment in June 2026. Among oth­er, it was not­ed that “in light of the increas­ing num­ber of cas­es of dis­sem­i­na­tion of destruc­tive infor­ma­tion, legal inves­ti­ga­tors are increas­ing mon­i­tor­ing and respond­ing prompt­ly to pub­li­ca­tions and com­ments, espe­cial­ly in Threads and Tik­Tok, with sub­se­quent legal assess­ment of the authors’ actions.” It was under­scored that at the very least, spe­cial atten­tion will be paid to the pub­li­ca­tions, con­tain­ing ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, incite­ment of social hos­til­i­ty, know­ing­ly false reports of dan­ger, and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazism.’

Propaganda in the state media

The pro­pa­gan­da activ­i­ties of the state media con­tin­ued in the same direc­tion with­in the peri­od under review. How­ev­er, they faced cer­tain obsta­cles at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el.

The ‘Soyuzny’ new pro­pa­gan­da TV chan­nel was found­ed in Belarus on April 1, 2026. It emerged due to the reforms of the so-called Union Media of Belarus and Rus­sia. It is part of the ‘Media Com­pa­ny of the Union State.’ The ‘Soyuzny’ replaced the ‘Bel­Ros’ pro­pa­gan­da TV chan­nel that had been broad­cast­ing its pro­grams for almost twen­ty years.

The Belaru­sian state media report­ed on the evening of April 3, 2026, that the YouTube video host­ing ser­vice had removed some of their chan­nels from the plat­form. The list of affect­ed media includ­ed the Belaru­sian Tele­graph Agency (BelTA), the ‘Stalich­naye Tele­bachan­nie’ (‘Cap­i­tal TV’, CTB) chan­nel, and ‘All-Nation­al’ TV (ANT). CTB launched a new YouTube chan­nel a few days lat­er. How­ev­er, it was also removed from the video host­ing ser­vice after­wards.

The out­raged pro-gov­ern­ment media out­lets respond­ed with threats to have the YouTube video plat­form labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ and com­plete­ly block it for pub­lic access from the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus. The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus stat­ed that it regard­ed these block­ings as ‘an unfriend­ly and ground­less step and reserved the right to take the nec­es­sary mea­sures in response.”

Dzmit­ry Zhuk was appoint­ed as a new Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus on April 9, 2026. He spoke cau­tious­ly when asked whether YouTube would be blocked in Belarus. ‘We need to look for oth­er mech­a­nisms for rela­tions with these major play­ers in the glob­al media space,’ he said. How­ev­er, he named the block­ing of the BelTA, CTB, and ANT YouTube chan­nels ‘an infor­ma­tion war with­out rules.’ 

On May 14, 2026, it was report­ed that that YouTube had blocked anoth­er Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da chan­nel. The state-owned ‘Radio Belarus’ media out­let was removed from the video host­ing ser­vice this time. It broad­casts pro­grams for a for­eign audi­ence.