MOST website and social media pages of its editor-in-chief declared “extremist formations”

“MOST has always been trans­par­ent. Any read­er can vis­it our edi­to­r­i­al offices. Such bold­ness can only anger the regime, which has been try­ing to intim­i­date and destroy all man­i­fes­ta­tions of free­dom and sol­i­dar­i­ty through­out its exis­tence. Noth­ing has changed for us, we con­tin­ue to work and devel­op MOST, as a bridge that will be used to cross to a demo­c­ra­t­ic Belarus,” the edi­to­r­i­al board com­ment­ed on the news of its inclu­sion in the list of extrem­ist for­ma­tions.

Rus­lan Kule­vich is a vet­er­an “extrem­ist”. In Jan­u­ary 2023, his social media accounts were declared extrem­ist. The con­tent pub­lished on the MOST Media web­site and its social media pages was rec­og­nized as extrem­ist twice: in May 2022 and April 2023 by two dif­fer­ent courts.

MOST pro­motes itself as a Bia­lystok-based region­al media out­let for Belaru­sians on both sides of the bor­der. MOST’s edi­to­r­i­al board is a team of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in forced exile, led by Rus­lan Kule­vich. The site cov­ers news and events in Belarus and Poland, with a focus on Bia­lystok and Hrod­na; life on the Belaru­sian-Pol­ish bor­der: peo­ple, his­to­ry, cul­ture, tourism and busi­ness; and bor­der inci­dents. “Our mis­sion is to unite the Belaru­sians of Bia­lystok and to remain an infor­ma­tion bridge between Belarus and Poland,” the web­site says.

Over the past two weeks, law enforce­ment offi­cials in Hrod­no have detained dozens of peo­ple for fol­low­ing social media pages that author­i­ties have labeled extrem­ist. Impor­tant­ly, fol­low­ing social media pages of “extrem­ist for­ma­tions” is a crim­i­nal offense in Belarus.

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