Special proceedings “for rehabilitation of nazism” launched against TV host Katsiaryna Vadanosava

The Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of Belarus announced this on Octo­ber 13. The agency’s Telegram chan­nel spec­i­fied that Kat­siary­na Vadanosa­va-Kalanchuk is charged with the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazism and the denial of the geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple.

Kat­siary­na Vadanosa­va. Pho­to: Ali­ak­san­dr Val­odzin

A crim­i­nal case against the TV host, vlog­ger, and researcher of his­tor­i­cal cos­tume was opened in March 2026. The pre­text for the pros­e­cu­tion was a video lec­ture titled “The main myth of World War II: The assas­si­na­tion of Gauleit­er Wil­helm Kube. What is wrong with it?” Accord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tors’ ver­sion, in these videos Vadanosa­va “glo­ri­fied Nazi crim­i­nals and their accom­plices.”

The author, a grad­u­ate of the his­to­ry depart­ment of Mak­sim Tank Belaru­sian State Ped­a­gog­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty who fin­ished with hon­ors, dis­agreed with the accu­sa­tion.

In Vadanosava’s view, the objec­tions to her inter­pre­ta­tion of his­tor­i­cal events come down to the fact that the state has “pri­va­tized” the sub­ject of the Great Patri­ot­ic War, and there­fore any attempt at his­tor­i­cal analy­sis that dif­fers even slight­ly from the usu­al offi­cial rhetoric is treat­ed as a crime.

Kat­siary­na cur­rent­ly lives in forced exile, and it is pre­cise­ly because of her absence from Belarus that the inves­ti­ga­tion and tri­al will pro­ceed under the so-called “spe­cial pro­ceed­ings”, that is, in absen­tia.

Vadanosa­va faces 5 to 12 years in prison on the charge of reha­bil­i­tat­ing Nazism, and up to 5 years on the charge of deny­ing the geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple.

Belaru­sian courts have pre­vi­ous­ly des­ig­nat­ed Vadanosava’s social media pages as “extrem­ist infor­ma­tion­al prod­uct.” This year, her pages on Insta­gram and Face­book were added to the Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als.