ONT announced a program featuring the politically imprisoned blogger Ihar Losik

Blog­ger Ihar Losik appeared for 20 sec­onds in the pro­pa­gan­da TV show «about employ­ees of the Amer­i­can media,» which was broad­cast on ONT on Jan­u­ary 14, 2025. Like jour­nal­ist Andrei Kuznechyk, he was brought to the KGB deten­tion cen­ter specif­i­cal­ly for this «inter­view». The gov­ern­ment-con­trolled TV sta­tion announced a «con­ver­sa­tion» with Losik for Jan­u­ary 15.

Ihar Losik. Screen­shot from the video, Jan­u­ary 14, 2025

Ihar Losik, a con­sul­tant for the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Radio Svabo­da and admin­is­tra­tor of the Telegram chan­nel «Belarus of the Brain,» was detained on June 25, 2020, after a search at his home in Baranavichy. Pri­or to the film­ing of the pro­pa­gan­da video, he was in the Navap­o­latsk penal colony No. 1.

He is serv­ing his sen­tence there – 15 years of impris­on­ment in a high-secu­ri­ty penal colony. This is the harsh­est sen­tence ever giv­en to a Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist or blog­ger.

The Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty has rec­og­nized Ihar Losik as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er. Accord­ing to sev­er­al sources close to Ihar, in June 2020, he felt threat­ened by the arrest and planned to leave Belarus on July 1, 2020. On that day, air traf­fic between Belarus and Geor­gia, which had been sus­pend­ed due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, was to resume. The Losik fam­i­ly had already pur­chased flight tick­ets. On June 28, 2022, the KGB added Ihar Losik to a list of peo­ple «asso­ci­at­ed with ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties,» sig­nif­i­cant­ly restrict­ing his rights and oppor­tu­ni­ties in deten­tion.

In July 2022, the prop­er­ty of the Losik fam­i­ly was seized to guar­an­tee the enforce­ment of a sen­tence order­ing the pay­ment of 22 mil­lion rubles in com­pen­sa­tion, as part of the «Tsikhanous­ki case». 

On Octo­ber 18, 2022, Ihar Losik’s wife, Darya, was arrest­ed and sen­tenced to two years in prison for giv­ing an inter­view about her hus­band to the inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media out­let «Bel­sat». She was only able to reunite with her lit­tle daugh­ter in July 2024.

Ihar Losik has been deeply con­cerned about his wife and daugh­ter. Accord­ing to some sources, the blog­ger is being held in a spe­cial unit with­in the penal colony, which includes a SHIZA (puni­tive iso­la­tion cell) and a PKT (cell-type facil­i­ty) locat­ed in a sep­a­rate build­ing. He has not been receiv­ing any let­ters, even from close fam­i­ly mem­bers.