Natalya Semenovich

Affiliated media: BAR24, Journalist

Incident date: November 11, 2025

Attack type:

• Selective application of repressive laws

Who attacked: Authorities

Source: Belarusian Association of Journalists

Location: Belarus, Baranavichy

Additional information:

The list of individuals involved in “extremist” activities maintained by the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs includes Natalya Semenovich, Nikita Petrovsky, Ruslan Revyako, and Lyudmila Zelenkova. All four are staff members of the Baranovichi news outlet BAR24, which was established by the team of the former independent regional publication Intex-Press. They were detained in December 2024. In August 2025, the Brest Regional Court convicted them under Article 361‑4 — “assisting extremist activity”. All were charged under the second part of the article, most likely because their “offence” was committed as part of a group. The journalists were sentenced to so-called “home chemistry” — a restriction of freedom without imprisonment, with the obligation to comply with special regime requirements. The criminal cases against the BAR24 journalists arose from the mass detentions of staff and journalists of the liquidated private publication Intex-Press in December 2024.