Journalist Ksenia Lutskina, who defied National TV, pardoned

Lut­ski­na was released from cus­tody a few days after Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka announced the release of sev­er­al polit­i­cal pris­on­ers with seri­ous health issues. Kse­nia Lut­ski­na suf­fers from asth­ma and has been diag­nosed with can­cer. Two tumors were found in her head, one of which was removed in 2012.

Kse­nia Lut­ski­na. Cour­tesy pho­to

Dur­ing her incar­cer­a­tion, it became evi­dent that the ail­ment was not abat­ing. The tumor, which was not excised due to the poten­tial risk of harm­ing vital brain struc­tures, began to expand. In July 2023, it was report­ed that the journalist’s par­ents were gath­er­ing doc­u­ments that could enhance her prospects of being par­doned.

In Homel Women’s Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 4, Kse­nia Lut­ski­na served the sen­tence imposed on her for “con­spir­a­cy to seize pow­er by uncon­sti­tu­tion­al means”. On Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022, Tat­siana Falk­ouskaya, a judge of the Min­sk City Court, sen­tenced Lut­ski­na to 8 years in prison. On Decem­ber 27, the Supreme Court upheld the sen­tence.

The jour­nal­ist, who had been employed by the Belaru­sian TV and Radio Com­pa­ny for 15 years, was found guilty of “high trea­son.” Fol­low­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in 2020, she par­tic­i­pat­ed in the com­pa­ny-wide strike, sub­se­quent­ly resign­ing from her posi­tion as a cor­re­spon­dent for the Belarus 2 TV chan­nel and join­ing the oppo­si­tion Coor­di­nat­ing Coun­cil.

Kse­nia sub­se­quent­ly announced plans to estab­lish an “alter­na­tive tele­vi­sion” chan­nel on YouTube in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er retired jour­nal­ists. The ini­tia­tive, which had been devel­oped in con­junc­tion with the Press Club Acad­e­my, was sched­uled to launch in Jan­u­ary 2021. This led to her arrest on 22 Decem­ber 2020 in Min­sk.