By EUvsDisinfo
Producing and airing so-called ‘repentance videos’ – in which political detainees supposedly confess, regret, or denounce their former activities or views – has been a regular practice by the Belarusian regime since 2020. They are part of a campaign to supress, denigrate, and humiliate domestic opponents and spread fear. The videos seek to project a brutal dominance of the information space. Usually, they feature detainees expressing remorse on camera for their alleged crimes. We tracked and analysed this disgusting manipulation in earlier articles here, here and here.
As of the end of 2024, Reporters Without Borders placed Belarus fourth in its ranking of countries in terms of the number of jailed journalists, with at least 40. While in prison, some media workers are forced to be filmed for propaganda videos.
2025 – New themes, new targets
The repentance videos aired on Belarusian state TV channels in January-February 2025 tended to feature the detainees aligning themselves with specific regime narratives.
Ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, Belarusian state TV featured a series of videos filmed with three imprisoned journalists of the Belarusian service of the US-supported Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and a political prisoner with dual Belarusian and US citizenship. The underlying message was that independent media in Belarus was allegedly a Western intelligence plot to destabilise the country.
KGB prison ‘interviews’ ahead of Trump’s inauguration
Imprisoned journalists Ihar Karnei, Andrei Kuznechyk, and blogger Ihar Losik, all previously linked to the US-supported Radio Liberty, were shown in January 2025 sitting bent down in a cold, KGB prison yard in black prison uniforms, answering questions aimed at discrediting non-state media. Losik, currently serving a 15-year sentence on politically motivated charges, was shown on state TV being escorted, handcuffed, to the ‘interview’ site.
Their ‘interviews’, each lasting between 12 and 24 minutes, were widely publicised and aired on primetime state TV days ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Editor’s note: We are not providing links or screenshots as we do not want to contribute to spreading this form of psychological violence.
In addition to three full ‘interviews’, a TV propaganda piece titled ‘Western cannon fodder. How extremists sought to destroy the Motherland, and why they are repenting now’ portrayed the ‘interviewed’ journalists as participants of an attempted coup d’état who did not fully realise the consequences of their actions.
Belarus state outlets have often presented the popular protests in response to the rigged 2020 presidential election in Belarus as an attempted coup. Subsequent broad-scale repression has shown little sign of decreasing even following the sham presidential election of January 2025, which Lukashenka predictably claimed he ‘won’.
Message to the US
In January, state TV released a forced interview with Yury Ziankovich, a political prisoner with both Belarus and US citizenship currently serving an 11-year sentence, where he was forced to discuss ‘colour revolutions’ and the external financing of independent Belarusian media. In contrast to the journalists, Ziankovich, who was presented by state TV as an ‘American lawyer, political scientist and expert’, was shown wearing a suit and sitting in what appeared to be a hotel.
This image differed starkly from an earlier forced video with Ziankovich from September 2024, when he was described as a ‘person who planned a bloody coup’ and was shown standing in a prison yard wearing an inmate uniform, praising Lukashenka, and addressing the US presidential candidates with a request to help him return to his family in the US. There is very little difference between such videos and those of hostages held by terrorists or pirates to extract ransom.
Senior US diplomat’s sudden visit to Minsk
Since 2020, hundreds of forced videos with detainees have been released by the Belarusian regime, mostly on Telegram channels linked to the state security agencies. The January 2025 repentance ‘interviews’ stood out for appearing to look like a bargaining chip and an invitation to the new US administration for a potential dialogue over political prisoners.
On 12 February 2025, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern Europe, Christopher Smith, paid an unannounced visit to Minsk. Described by The New York Times as a ‘secret trip’, Smith’s sudden arrival in Minsk was indeed the first visit by a senior US diplomat to Belarus since the February 2020 visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during Trump’s first administration. The NYT report suggested that a large-scale prisoner swap between Washington and Minsk – there are over 1 200 in Belarus – in return for an easing of sanctions might follow sometime in the future.
On the day of Smith’s visit to Minsk, three political prisoners were released and immediately escorted to the border with Lithuania where US diplomats from Vilnius picked them up. One of the freed prisoners with US citizenship later told independent media that the release seemed like a forceful expulsion from the country. Handcuffed and masked, he and Andrei Kuznechyk, one of the ‘interviewed’ Radio Liberty journalists, were transported from prison without knowing their destination or that they were being released. Belarus state TV later went on to claim that thanks to the release of the prisoners, Belarus helped Russia create a more conducive environment ahead of the bilateral negotiations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Return home, strings attached: denounce the EU
Another type of forced videos circulating earlier this year were so-called ‘interviews’ with Belarusians who had lived in Eu countries but recently returned to Belarus. The majority of videos were recorded under false pretext about the purpose of the videos. The most recent film shown as propaganda contained video testimonies from Belarusians abroad experiencing many challenges and messages attempted to convince TV viewers of the inferiority of Western countries and the moral decay and poor standard of living.
Doing a form of repentance or denunciation video of Western countries seems to be one of the preconditions for a supposedly safe return to Belarus. The regime will decide if and when to air it.
A recent state TV report featuring a Belarusian, who relocated to Spain in 2022 for an IT company, focussed on aspects that the returnee disliked in Barcelona. In another such ‘interview’, a construction worker, who lived in Poland for years, was shown repeating various state propaganda claims upon his arrival in Belarus.
But videos can’t fool the people
Many of these forced interviews on Belarusian state TV are not about public remorse over past actions but about feigning enthusiasm and alignment with Lukashenka and his policies. They also attempt to demoralise the regime’s opponents. But information about the real situation flows across borders and the videos seem unable to fool Belarus’s broader society as there are no widespread, voluntary displays of appreciation.
Democratically-minded people will mark the Day of Solidarity with Belarus on 25 March, Belarus’s Freedom Day, rather than by applauding Lukashenka.
By EUvsDisinfo
