On 12 January 2026, the pro-government Telegram channel «Belarusian Front» published details of how invitations to a reception at the Presidential Palace in Poland had been allocated. It cited decisions by the Polish administration that had not been made public anywhere at the time. This episode is just one example of the system we describe in our new research: the Belarusian authorities systematically use digital tools to persecute the diaspora outside the country.
Since the 2020 election, an estimated 500,000–600,000 people have left Belarus. Inside the country, the Viasna Human Rights Centre has recorded more than 100,000 cases of persecution over five years, and 4,774 people have been recognised as political prisoners. Emigration does not mean escaping the risk. The authorities move their tools of pressure into the digital space, where state borders are no longer an obstacle.
We analysed posts from 11 pro-government Telegram channels from 2023 to 2026 (102,200 posts). We also examined dozens of documented cases of discreditation, intelligence operations and doxxing, as well as the systematic production of AI content targeting specific individuals.
What we found
Pro-government Telegram channels are not a set of independent outlets with a similar agenda. They form an interconnected ecosystem. For some channels, state affiliation is documented. «Nevolfovich» is run by the Main Directorate of Ideological Work of the Ministry of Defence, and «Obratnaya Storona» («The Other Side») is overseen by the Information and Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Other channels are formally anonymous. However, they regularly receive material that is usually available only to the security services, and they publish it in sync with official actions.
We identified five types of operations against the diaspora and civil society:
- fabrication of fakes and deepfakes;
- intelligence operations: bots and honeypot websites imitating trusted organisations, fake employers, and direct recruitment through relatives who remain in Belarus;
- online threats;
- attacks on organisations’ infrastructure and doxxing, including publishing personal data in official «extremist» registries;
- financial doxxing of NGOs.
A separate trend is the production of synthetic content using AI. Since 2022, the Telegram channel «Liudazhory» has released more than 150 episodes of its satirical project «Neurocomics». It uses models trained on the likenesses of real people and cloned voices. This practice has a clear gender dimension. All the eroticised, sexualised content we found in the dataset targets women. Men are discredited differently, through accusations of treason, alcoholism and mental instability.
Two cases
The day before the presidential election in January 2025, a realistic video appeared on social media in which Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya supposedly resigned her powers. Even other public figures in the opposition believed it was real before Tsikhanouskaya’s team managed to debunk the fake.
In spring 2026, propagandist Raman Pratasevich showed the photo and date of birth of a woman on STV. She had been found on social media because her first and last name matched the pen name of a Belarusian Investigation Center journalist. The woman shown on air has nothing to do with journalism and has lived in Sweden for almost ten years.
Why it matters
Digital pressure almost never reaches the threshold at which the usual protection mechanisms kick in. There is no physical harm, no perpetrator in the host country’s jurisdiction, and no event that can be classified as an attack. This system is designed precisely for that. Until digital pressure is recognised as a serious form of transnational repression on a par with physical attacks, life in exile will not mean the end of repression, only a change in its form.
What we recommend
- Belarusian NGOs: review how much personal data they collect and minimise volunteers’ and staff members’ access to beneficiary databases.
- Host states: recognise doxxing and targeted cyberattacks as a form of persecution when considering applications for international protection.
- Tech platforms: proactively identify channels and bots that publish personal data with calls for harassment, without waiting for complaints from victims.
The full list of recommendations and all documented cases are in the study.