Polish media: Belsat correspondents do not receive regular salaries

Pol­ish edi­tion Press.pl found out that jour­nal­ists of the Bel­sat TV chan­nel, work­ing in Ukraine and Rus­sia, com­plain about irreg­u­lar pay­ment of salaries. Prob­lems with pay­ments are also report­ed in the head­quar­ters in War­saw, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of pro­duc­tion and instal­la­tion teams.

Bel­sat News­room. Pho­to: Tat­siana Ver­ameye­va / Bel­sat

- TVP does not pay their salaries. The arrears — since April,» Press.pl quot­ed a jour­nal­ist of «Bel­sat», who wished to remain anony­mous. — Is it pos­si­ble not to pay peo­ple who have con­tracts and risk their lives or free­dom?

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive office of Bel­sat in Ukraine has been oper­at­ing since 2018. Every year, the num­ber of jour­nal­ists work­ing for the TV chan­nel from Kyiv increased, and in April 2023, a new Bel­sat office was opened in the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal. The office is head­ed by Illia Suz­daleu, who was forced to move from Donet­sk to Kyiv in 2014.

Now the jour­nal­ists of the Kyiv office are report­ing from the front, risk­ing their lives. In addi­tion, they face prob­lems with reg­u­lar salary pay­ments. One of the employ­ees told Press.pl that he attrib­ut­es these dif­fi­cul­ties to the recent unrest around Bel­sat. How­ev­er, he does not hide the fact that such delays have hap­pened before.

Cor­re­spon­dents from Rus­sia, who coop­er­ate with the TV sta­tion anony­mous­ly and risk being impris­oned in their coun­try, have also faced non-pay­ment.

The same prob­lems are report­ed in the War­saw head­quar­ters.

«Since April, all the bills of the film­ing and edit­ing teams have not been paid. The film crew works for free and we are afraid that one day they will sim­ply refuse to work,» one of the edi­to­r­i­al jour­nal­ists com­ment­ed to Press.pl.

The press ser­vice of Telewiz­ja Pol­s­ka repeats that «Bel­sat TV tries to pay all finan­cial oblig­a­tions on time”.

What’s going on with Belsat?

The chan­nel faced prob­lems after the new Pol­ish gov­ern­ment reor­ga­nized pub­lic media, includ­ing Pol­ish Tele­vi­sion, to which Bel­sat belonged.

In July 2024, the Pol­ish por­tal Onet report­ed about accu­sa­tions against Bel­sat man­agers — they were sus­pect­ed of finan­cial fraud in the con­clu­sion of con­tracts for IT ser­vices.

In response, the Bel­sat man­age­ment issued a state­ment protest­ing «against slan­der».

The TV chan­nel also felt the slow­down of the web­site and then its dis­con­nec­tion.

«Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Bel­sat TV team itself has very lim­it­ed influ­ence on this sit­u­a­tion, and to be hon­est — almost none. I real­ly hope that in the near future it will be pos­si­ble to some­how cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion, to con­vince the rel­e­vant per­sons not to deprive us of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring Bel­sat pro­grams to you by all avail­able means,» Aliaksei Dzikav­it­ski com­ment­ed on these events.

At the end of August, the site resumed its work on the old domain belsat.eu.