Dzianis Ivashyn was so ill he could barely get out of bed, his wife says

Impris­oned jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Ivashyn spent ten days in the med­ical unit of Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 15 in Mahilou. He was then excused from work for anoth­er week. But he still does not feel ful­ly well even now. Because of the ill­ness, there was no con­tact with Dzia­n­is for sev­er­al weeks.

Dzia­n­is Ivashyn. Pho­to: BAJ

His moth­er final­ly received a phone call only last Fri­day, Novem­ber 6.

“The short con­ver­sa­tion revealed the rea­son for the long break in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Dzia­n­is. All that time (from Octo­ber 22 to Novem­ber 2), he was seri­ous­ly ill and even end­ed up in the facility’s med­ical unit.

The virus hit him so hard that Dzia­n­is did not have the strength even to get up from his infir­mary bed, let alone write us a let­ter or sign a post­card.

I won’t even men­tion the escorts to the phone booths,” wrote Vol­ha Ivashy­na, the impris­oned journalist’s wife, on her Face­book page.

While there were no let­ters or phone calls from her hus­band, Vol­ha assumed he might have been placed in a pun­ish­ment cell. It turned out that Ivashyn had been fight­ing a viral ill­ness the whole time.

The polit­i­cal prisoner’s wife is con­vinced that the harsh con­di­tions in the facil­i­ty, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of prompt­ly get­ting nec­es­sary med­ica­tion and vit­a­mins to inmates, played a harm­ful role in this sit­u­a­tion.

“Dzia­n­is fell ill pre­cise­ly because his immune sys­tem was weak­ened by a lack of vit­a­mins. The last time we got vit­a­mins to him, I think, was still back in the pre­tri­al deten­tion cen­ter of the Hrod­na prison. Dzia­n­is rationed those vit­a­mins spar­ing­ly for almost the entire time of his sen­tence. But a sup­ply can­not be end­less, and get­ting new vit­a­mins, like any oth­er med­ica­tion, to a polit­i­cal pris­on­er in strict-regime facil­i­ties and pris­ons is an almost impos­si­ble quest from the sep­a­rate ‘cir­cles of hell,’” Ivashy­na notes.

Accord­ing to her infor­ma­tion, from Novem­ber 9, Dzia­n­is is sup­posed to work in the facil­i­ty under the same con­di­tions as before his ill­ness.

The impris­oned jour­nal­ist has been held in Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 15 since June 18, 2026. Until then, he had spent 3 years in Prison No. 8 in Zhodz­i­na. The Mahilou facil­i­ty was also his first place of impris­on­ment before the prison. He was sent there in late Jan­u­ary 2023, when the court ver­dict took effect, sen­tenc­ing Ivashyn to 13 years of impris­on­ment and a mas­sive fine.

The case of Dzianis Ivashyn

Dzia­n­is Ivashyn is a cor­re­spon­dent for the inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian news­pa­per Novy Chas and a vol­un­teer edi­tor of the Belaru­sian-lan­guage ver­sion of the web­site run by Inform­Na­palm, an inter­na­tion­al inves­tiga­tive com­mu­ni­ty. The jour­nal­ist is known for his inves­ti­ga­tions into the influ­ence of the “Russ­ian world” on Belarus and Syr­ia, as well as into the con­tro­ver­sial devel­op­ment of the Kura­p­aty memo­r­i­al site near Min­sk.

Dzia­n­is Ivashyn has been impris­oned for near­ly five years, since March 12, 2021. He was ini­tial­ly charged with inter­fer­ence with the activ­i­ties of inter­nal affairs offi­cers, and author­i­ties lat­er added a charge of “high trea­son” as well.

The “last straw” for the Belaru­sian author­i­ties was like­ly his inves­ti­ga­tion into for­mer Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty offi­cials who had tak­en jobs with the Belaru­sian riot police. The jour­nal­ist was detained lit­er­al­ly the day after he gave an inter­view about this to the inde­pen­dent TV Cur­rent Time.

On Sep­tem­ber 14, 2022, the Hrod­na Region­al Court found him guilty of trea­son and ille­gal col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion about pri­vate life. Judge Valer Ramanous­ki sen­tenced Ivashyn to 13 years and 1 month in prison. He was also ordered to pay a total of $9,030 in moral dam­ages to nine secu­ri­ty offi­cers.

In late June 2023, his pun­ish­ment was tight­ened: with­out noti­fy­ing his fam­i­ly or lawyer, the court trans­ferred him to a high-secu­ri­ty prison. He spent three years there, and on June 18, 2026, he was trans­ferred back to Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 15.