Belarus Service
Radio Svaboda overcomes significant censorship and pervasive disinformation to provide audiences in Belarus with accurate and independent reporting.
Website page views
(2024)
Facebook video views
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About the Service
RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, known locally as Radio Svaboda, was established in 1954 to reach Belarusian audiences behind the Iron Curtain.
Radio Svaboda reports news from Prague and Vilnius to Belarusians living in a closed society.
According to a 2024 survey conducted in Belarus, Radio Svaboda is reaching 7.4% of the adult population weekly.
The Service’s podcast The Belag Archipelago covers Belarus’ descent into a prison state under Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s rule and its journalists frequently highlight the plight of political prisoners in Belarus.
The Service’s narrative podcast Lukashenka’s Lackeys is a groundbreaking six-part visualized miniseries capturing the brutal crackdown on the 2020 protests from the perspective of security forces.
Radio Svaboda was the first to uncover the emergence of a military camp in Belarus for Russian Wagner mercenaries and its subsequent dismantling.
Reaching Audiences
Media Climate
Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index ranks Belarus 167th of 180 countries.
Radio Svaboda journalist Ihar Losik is unjustly imprisoned on fabricated charges by Lukashenka’s regime, which seeks to silence independent journalism.
In August 2020, Radio Svaboda websites were blocked. In July 2021, Radio Svaboda’s Minsk bureau was raided and sealed.
In December 2021, Radio Svaboda was designated an “extremist organization” by Belarus’ Interior Ministry, criminalizing the reporting, distribution, and consumption of RFE/RL content.
In July 2024, Yury Drakakhrust, a journalist and analyst for the Belarus Service based in Prague, was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison by Belarusian authorities on false charges.
Latest Updates
RFE/RL Files New Request for Emergency Relief in US District Court
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has filed an updated emergency request in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to order the United States Agency for Global…
Still Awaiting Funds, RFE/RL Furloughs Staff and Seeks Relief from Court
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) today began furloughing staff at its Prague headquarters because the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) has not sent RFE/RL its Congressionally appropriated funds…
RFE/RL Awaits Funds, Continues Court Case
RFE/RL looks forward to receiving the funds that Congress has appropriated to us through the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
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