Political persecution:
On 20 November 2024, Valery Pazniakievič was detained following a denunciation by a pro-Russian activist and sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest for posting socio-political poems on social media. According to the poet, police officers also objected to the language of his work: “During the search of my flat on 20 November 2024, police major Kaciaryna Stankievič asked why I write in Belarusian rather than Russian.”
In 2025, Pazniakievič received five further administrative arrests for poems and statements published online. Since November 2024, his writings have been subjected to repeated expert assessments, with investigators seeking evidence of “extremism”, focusing on the poems My Golgotha and Chagall’s Flight.
In 2024 and 2025, he paid fines totalling 115 base units (4,830 roubles / 1,660 USD) for online expression.
On 14 August 2025, the Minsk District Court convicted him under Article 368(2) of the Criminal Code (“insulting the President of the Republic of Belarus”). It sentenced him to three years of restricted liberty in an open-type correctional facility.
An appeal submitted by his mother, Nadzieja Pazniakievič, to the Presidential Administration seeking mitigation of the sentence was rejected.
Creative activity:
Valery Pazniakievič was born on 10 April 1968 in the village of Sinkievičy, Łuniniec District, Brest Region. He graduated from the Belarusian Department of the Faculty of Philology at Belarusian State University and subsequently worked as a journalist. Before his arrest, he was caring for his mother, who has a first-degree disability and severe mobility impairments.
Pazniakievič is the author of Circles of Life: Poems (Minsk: Smeltak, 2017). His work has appeared in Polymia, Belarus, Maładosć, Biarozka, Pieršacviet, Zrok; in the Day of Poetry almanack; and in numerous newspapers including Literatura i Mastactva, Čyrvonaja Zmiena, Naša Słova, Minskaja Praŭda, Biełaruskaja Niva, Narodnaja Vola and Łuninieckija Naviny.
His poems have been included in the secondary school reader Touch the Native Word with Your Heart, as well as the anthologies Ahliedziny, Towards the Spirit, and A Poem for Freedom.
Publications:
Poems and songs on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578334476917
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011745460176
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CPI2niQHfXu/
Place of detention:
Open-type correctional facility, 220012, 76A Čaluskincaŭ Street, Mahiloŭ.