How Belarusian political prisoners went from being “common criminals” and “extremists” to becoming a bargaining chip and a tool for legitimizing Lukashenka in the rhetoric of official Minsk – in an analytical review by iSANS.
PREFACE
From the very beginning of the mass peaceful protests against the rigged presidential election in August 2020, Belarusians who disagreed with the regime and leaders of democratic forces became the main target of propaganda. All efforts by Lukashenka’s ideologues were aimed at discrediting and undermining the democratic movement. The authorities in Minsk were so frightened by the scale of the peaceful revolution that they turned to Moscow for military and ideological support.
As a result, at the end of August 2020, a “landing party” of professional propagandists and employees of Russian federal television channels, including RT (formerly Russia Today), REN-TV, All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Russia-1, and NTV, arrived in Minsk. They replaced Belarusian journalists who had resigned from state media in protest and effectively took control of all ideological work in the country. Not only Belarusian but also Russian channels broadcast round-the-clock “exposing” videos about protesters, accusing them of receiving Western money to “rock the boat,” threatening terrible punishment for those who took to the streets in protest, and glorifying the brutality of the security forces in dispersing demonstrations.
Since then, the Belarusian information agenda has been fully synchronized with Russia’s on issues that are key to the Kremlin. The state-controlled media began to act as transmitters of Russian narratives and to broadcast Moscow’s point of view on major world events, leaving only a few regional stories for themselves, among which the fight against “internal enemies” still ranks first.
The 2020 protests remain the main “nightmare” for the Belarusian authorities, who are doing everything in their power to prevent them from happening again. A significant part of the propaganda efforts to strengthen and preserve the regime are still focused on fighting dissent.
Hundreds of activists and leaders of the democratic movement remain in Belarusian prisons. The list of political prisoners compiled by the Viasna Human Rights Center at the beginning of November 2025 includes 1,235 names. Their number is not decreasing but growing: according to human rights activists, “as long as the repression continues, there will be more and more political prisoners, despite releases and pardons.” Many of them have been completely isolated from the outside world for years, all contact with them has been lost, and they cannot raise their voices in their own defense.
Once behind bars, Belarusians continue to be the targets of information attacks, insults, curses, threats, ridicule, and mockery in the media. Propaganda dehumanizes and demonizes political prisoners, portraying them in its materials as “parasites,” “scum of society,” “madmen” (only such people can go against the regime), terrorists, extremists, and attempts to tarnish their reputation by accusing them of corruption, embezzlement of Western grants, and internal scandals over the division of power. Most importantly, it claims that there are no political prisoners in Belarus. Those who are in prison, according to propagandists and Lukashenka himself, are ordinary criminals punished for “non-political” crimes. Our review provides many examples of such statements.
While denying the existence of political prisoners, the Lukashenka regime nevertheless directs the full brunt of its repression and slanderous information attacks against them. In prisons and penal colonies, the clothing of political prisoners is marked with yellow tags. According to the Viasna Center, this is how prisoners who are placed on preventive registration as “prone to extremism” are marked. Those detained under “political articles” are automatically placed on such a register. This campaign to dehumanize political prisoners bears a direct analogy to Nazi Germany, where yellow stars were used to mark the clothing of genocide victims – Jews.
This review attempts to trace the changes in the main narratives of Belarusian propaganda regarding political prisoners from August 2024, when the gradual release of small groups of political prisoners began, to the present day, when the exchange of prisoners has finally become a bargaining chip for Minsk.
In general, three main semantic lines can be traced in the statements of propagandists and officials during the specified period:
- Denial of the existence of political prisoners
Propaganda and officials constantly insist that there are no political prisoners in Belarus, as there are no corresponding political articles in the Belarusian Criminal Code. Those who are called political prisoners are: a) “ordinary criminals,” felons, b) terrorists, extremists, and traitors of the motherland.
- “Bargaining chip”
Nevertheless, if for some reason these people are needed by the U.S. or Europe, Minsk is ready to show generosity, release them, and deport them in exchange for the satisfaction of certain demands from the Belarusian side. Promises to ease sanctions are ineffective, as Western sanctions have proven to be ineffective.
- “The opposition has no influence”
Decisions on pardons, releases, and deportations are made personally by the merciful and generous “batska” Lukashenka. Those who have left, the opposition, and representatives of democratic forces abroad do not determine the lists of those to be released and do not influence decision-making. Not only that, they are not interested in the fate of political prisoners, being preoccupied with internal conflicts and the division of finances. It is in the opposition’s interest to keep political prisoners behind bars, because this allows them to talk about the “horrors of the regime” in the West and receive grants to fight it. The only one who cares about the fate of political prisoners is the “president.”
The following examples of quotes, collected and classified during the media monitoring by iSANS, illustrate all three lines in the narratives of state propaganda.
The full report about political prisoners as a bargaining chip with the West in Lukashenka’s propaganda narratives can be read or downloaded VIA THE LINK.
Материал доступен на русском языке: «Это прекрасный биг дил!» Политзаключенные как предмет торга с Западом в нарративах пропаганды Лукашенко
