When Ihar Losik — a Catholic husband, father and journalist from Belarus who in 2021 wrote an impassioned plea for support to the late Pope Francis — appeared on a Belarusian state-run television program in January, it was the first that anyone had heard from him in two years. 

Detained and sentenced to hard labor for his support of pro-democracy, U.S.-funded media activities that rankled Belarus’ authoritarian regime, Losik, the 33-year-old father of a 6-year-old daughter he hasn’t seen since she was a baby, recently marked five years in prison. 

The young Belarusian was first arrested in June 2020 ahead of a highly disputed presidential election. Belarusian authorities later handed Losik a 15-year sentence. The charges brought against him included incitement of hatred, “organization and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order,” and “preparation for participation in riots.”

Those who knew Losik were alarmed and saddened by the way he looked and spoke during his TV appearance, which was likely forced — it was clear his years behind bars had not been kind to him. 

On a frigid night in Minsk — when, exactly, is hard to know — he was marched from his prison cell to an interview chair. For the next half hour, a steely-eyed interviewer clad entirely in black questioned the young prisoner on his connection to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a news agency that promotes democracy, human rights and free speech. Established in 1949 as “Radio Free Europe” during the Cold War, RFE/RL is a U.S.-funded news organization that broadcasts primarily to former Soviet Union nations where freedom of the press is restricted. 

Losik had been a freelance contributor to Radio Svoboda, the Belarusian service of RFE/RL. He co-founded a popular Telegram channel that disseminated uncensored news in Belarus and covered topics such as government human-rights violations and opposition candidates. He also managed the Twitter account for RFE/RL’s Belarus service. 

In his interview, Losik discussed how his coverage as a journalist, which was guided by RFE/RL’s editorial line, initially focused on the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and later morphed into election coverage, including coverage of opposition demonstrations.  

Late in the interview, the young journalist told the host — with sorrow clearly welling behind his eyes — about how much he regretted having joined the opposition movement, warning viewers that it’s just “not worth it.” The resulting interview, highly produced and edited in the style of a true-crime show, was posted online in January by a state-run news channel. 

Losik, who is just one of an estimated thousands of jailed political dissidents under Belarus’ authoritarian regime, gained attention in recent years for the heartfelt plea he made to Pope Francis in a 2021 letter.

The young journalist told Francis about the hopelessness he had experienced in the harsh conditions of the Belarusian prison, even to the point where he at one point seriously contemplated suicide. He also lamented that his young daughter was growing up without a father, worrying that she will forget him “or even forget the word ‘dad.’”

“I am asking Your Holiness to call on these terrible people who do not care about the lives of others, of hundreds of grief-stricken families, to stop,” Losik wrote to Pope Francis in August 2021.

“Maybe I am too naive, and this letter will never reach you. Nevertheless, I am writing it completely sincerely and from the bottom of my heart. I believe that I am writing it for a reason. I really want to believe that God has not abandoned us, that this senseless cruelty will stop, that no one else will die and everyone will return to their families.”

Lengthy Periods of Silence

There have been lengthy incommunicado periods recently, with no news and no letters in or out of the prison where Losik is believed to be held — a KGB detention center in Minsk — said Deniz Yuksel, advocacy manager for RFE/RL. 

Very little is known about the conditions, or about Losik’s physical and mental state; in fact, at any given time it is almost impossible to know if he is still alive, Yuksel told the Register in an interview. 

“We don’t get news from him. There are no court hearings. There are no opportunities where he’s able to say something or send out letters about how he’s doing,” Yuksel explained. 

In terms of Losik’s plea to Pope Francis, Yuksel said it is unlikely that a response — if the late Pope ever wrote one — ever reached Losik. Moreover, whether or not Pope Leo XIV is aware of Losik’s case is not yet clear. But Yuksel said the team at RFE/RL was heartened by Pope Leo’s strong words early in his pontificate in support of journalists, particularly journalists who are incarcerated worldwide. 

In his inaugural remarks as pope to the international media, delivered on May 12, Pope Leo reiterated the Church’s solidarity with journalists who have been imprisoned for seeking to report the truth and appealed for their release.

“The Church recognizes in these witnesses — I am thinking of those who report on war even at the cost of their lives — the courage of those who defend dignity, justice and the right of people to be informed, because only informed individuals can make free choices,” the newly elected Pope Leo said. 

“The suffering of these imprisoned journalists challenges the conscience of nations and the international community, calling on all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press.”

Pope Leo’s words ring true to the reasons that Losik was working in journalism in the first place, Yuksel said. She described Losik as “a Catholic who holds these same values and [a] commitment to human rights and dignity.”

“He believed that the people of his country have a right to be free from persecution, to be free to express their thoughts and their beliefs, and also to be free to access information about the issues that are important to them,” she said. 

“Anyone who strongly believes in these rights is clearly a threat to autocracy.”

Belarus in Context

Belarus, a former Soviet Union nation, is ruled by an authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who won the country’s first democratic election in 1994 and has clung to power ever since, winning reelection each time under highly disputed circumstances. Most recently, following a nationwide election in January 2025 that opposition figures described as farcical, Lukashenko laid claim to a seventh term in office. 

Belarus is tightly intertwined with its massive neighbor and close ally, Russia, and has provided vital support in Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. According to press-freedom monitoring groups, the country has a dismal human-rights record, and perceived dissidents and those labeled “extremists” are frequently detained.

A self-described atheist, Lukashenko has tightened his grip against religious believers in the country in recent years, signing a law in 2024 requiring religious denominations and any group wanting to do any religious activities — such as churches, Bible studies and prayer groups — to register with the state, thus providing the regime with an ongoing database of religious believers. 

Criticism of and public protest against Lukashenko’s regime came to a head after the Belarusian presidential election of August 2020, during which Lukashenko claimed to have won 80% of the vote. According to The Associated Press, at least 35,000 people were detained in Belarus during protests following the election, including many Catholics, who make up roughly 10% of the population. 

The Catholic archbishop of Minsk-Mogilev at the time, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, openly called for an end to violence against protesters. Archbishop Kondrusiewicz was later prevented from returning to Belarus for four months, likely because he prayed outside of a prison where detained protesters were reportedly being tortured. Archbishop Kondrusiewicz was succeeded by Archbishop Iosif Staneŭski in 2021.  

Losik is far from the first Catholic to be imprisoned under the Belarusian regime. Volha Zalatar, a Catholic mother of five, was detained in 2021 and even suffered torture for creating an unsanctioned — but entirely benign — online group chat. She was finally released in 2024. 

Later that same year, in December, a Catholic priest, Father Henrykh Akalatovich, was sentenced in Belarus to 11 years in prison for “high treason,” having been accused of spying on behalf of Poland and the Vatican. 

Natallia Vasilevich, an Orthodox Christian theologian and political scientist from Belarus now living in Germany, told the Register in an interview that even before Lukashenko passed the 2024 law mandating that religions must register with the government, the situation for religious freedom in Belarus was already one of the worst in Eastern Europe. 

Vasilevich serves as moderator of Christian Vision for Belarus (CVB), a Lithuania-based ecumenical group formed in 2020 to unite Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and evangelical clergy, theologians and activists. The group promotes human rights and dignity as well as democratic development in Belarus, monitoring developments in the field of religion in the country and supporting persecuted Christians. 

Though Vasilevich said she was not aware of any overtly religious angle to Losik’s posts on Twitter and Telegram prior to his arrest, CVB helped to promote Losik’s letter to Pope Francis when he wrote it in 2021. As far as Vasilevich is aware, Losik is the last person with ties to the U.S. to still be imprisoned in Belarus.

Religious organizations of all kinds in Belarus are persecuted, though the Belarusian Orthodox Church enjoys a favored status, often aligning with state narratives, including those concerning the war in Ukraine. In contrast, other religious groups, especially Protestants and Catholics, face severe restrictions, detentions, church closures and broad surveillance. 

Leaders and members are frequently implicated and detained for sharing content that the government deems to be “extremist”; and, in fact, Christian Vision for Belarus has been designated an extremist group by the Belarusian KGB, with no explicit reason given, Vasilevich said. 

Many religious organizations have reduced their activities as a result of the government’s pressure, she said. 

“It breaks religious communities; that’s the goal of the regime. Because they try to break solidarity, break trust, so the people cannot unite and do something together and build a civil society,” Vasilevich explained. 

What’s Next for Ihar?

The U.S. State Department is “very much aware of Ihar’s case,” Yuksel said. Still, it is far from clear whether there will be any updates to share on Losik’s freedom any time soon. 

Losik’s wife, Daria, had been sentenced in October 2022 to a two-year imprisonment for speaking out against Losik’s detention, but was released in July 2024 as part of a mass amnesty. Ihar’s younger brother, Mikita Losik, 25, was also recently detained but managed to flee the country. 

In written answers translated from Belarusian and facilitated by RFE/RL, Mikita told the Register that Ihar has been a religious person since childhood and was inspired by the example of a mutual relative of the brothers, who is a Catholic priest. 

As a child, Ihar spent every summer at his grandmother’s house in a village in northern Belarus, regularly attending services at the local Catholic church. 

“Faith plays a very important role in his life right now. He has mentioned many times that he prays in prison and reads the Bible. Faith helps him hold on and gives him the strength not to give up,” Mikita told the Register. 

Despite the lack of reliable information about his whereabouts and condition, there is a glimmer of hope — however slight — for Losik, in the form of the recent release of two of his imprisoned Radio Svoboda colleagues, Andrei Kuznechyk and Ihar Karnei, who have since spoken out in support of Losik’s release.  

Kuznechyk, who got to know Losik when they were both imprisoned at a penal colony and appeared in a similar propaganda video, was released and able to reunite with his family in Lithuania in February, after the Trump administration negotiated his freedom. And more recently, Karnei — who also appeared in a forced video — was released in late June, also as a result of U.S. negotiations. 

Political prisoners at the penal colony were not allowed to attend religious services, Kuznechyk told the Register in written answers. Even those few prisoners given the privilege of attending were given only the option of attending Orthodox or Protestant services; Catholics like Losik were not given any option to attend Mass.  

“As a nonreligious person, I can see that strong faith in God helps people carry the burden of imprisonment, injustice, and the loss of hope more easily,” Kuznechyk said. 

“I hope this is also true for Ihar, and that it helps him endure the suffering to which the repressive system has condemned him.”

Yuksel encouraged people of goodwill to write to Losik, even though there is a very low possibility that any letters will ever get though to him. Yuksel said she hopes to someday show Losik the copies of the letters she and her colleagues have written to him over the years, to show him that “at no point was he forgotten.” 

“As an advocate, I can tell you [the lack of communication] makes it very difficult to keep a spotlight on him,” Yuksel said, “and that’s why I think it’s important for us to talk about him.”