Belarus’s informational partisans

Civilians face repression for sharing Russian troop movements

~ Nikita Ivansky ~

In September 2025, opposition media in Belarus estimated that one thousand civilians —many unknown to to human rights defenders—have been prosecuted for spreading intelligence about Russian troop movements on Telegram since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2024.

Preparations for the invasion were made in Belarus under the guise of military training. When Belarusians found themselves on the Kremlin’s side of the war, there existed a partisan movement which sabotaged the railroad system to paralyze troop movement, while a larger part of society joined the silent resistance by taking pictures and videos of Russian military personnel at bases or in transit. They sent these images and videos to different Telegram channels to provide the Ukrainian resistance with crucial information on the movement of aviation or rocket/drone launches, which often targeted civilian infrastructure

One of the biggest information gathering projects that emerged from this was called Belarusian Hajun, a Telegram channel with a bot to where people could send pictures directly. Within several weeks, the project exploded, with over 30,000 information points sent in the first 45 days of the invasion.

While the project was a huge open-source intelligence success in countering the Russian war, the Belarusian state began hunting those providing such information from the very beginning. Among them was antifascist Anna Pyshnik, who was sentenced to three years in prison for sending pictures of the military on Telegram. She served her whole term and was released in 2024, she had to leave Belarus in fear of further political prosecution.

“When the war started, it was difficult to comprehend”, said Pyshnik after her release. “The very next day, I heard something like an explosion; even our building shook. I ran outside and saw a rocket trail. I decided to film it. You just stand there and realise how close the war is, you realise how the authorities are lying when they say that nothing will ever happen to Ukraine from Belarusian territory. I understood that people needed to know what was happening. So I sent the video I had filmed to independent media outlets. Two days later, I filmed military helicopters over the city and sent that to the media as well”.

At the beginning of 2025, the Belarusian secret police infiltrated a critical Telegram chat on Belarusian Hajun, obtaining information on thousands of accounts working for the project. Many of these accounts belonged to people inside the country. Since then, a massive wave of repression has begun against anyone who participated in the project by sending reports. At least 54 people were prosecuted for helping the project under the charge of “aiding an extremist organisation”.

The attack on the Belarusian Hajun project was made possible by an old link found on the phone of someone arrested before February 2025. Created in 2022, this link allowed them to join a closed chat containing critical information. This is not the first time the KGB has managed to access closed chats and collect information leading to more prosecutions.

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