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We investigate corruption, uncover fake news and analyze the news agenda. The BIC is a member of the global network of investigative journalists.

Our journalists are the recipients of the national award “Free Word” from the Association of Journalists of Belarus in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. At "Free Word" 2021 BIC’s team also received first place for Analytics

BIC is a member of the OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project)

We are also members of GIJN (Global Investigative Journalism Network)

News

Today

“They’re trying to get you to hand over information”. Ukrainian draft evaders are being interrogated in Belarus

Plainclothes officers are interested in the movement of military equipment, and the impact of Russian air strikes.

Authors: Maksym Savchuk, Yuliya Radionovich

Ukrainian men of conscription age who manage to cross the border with Belarus illegally are interrogated by plainclothes officers. The BIC learned this from users in Telegram chat groups, where people who have escaped share their experiences with those who are planning to do so. During interrogations, agents seek information about the movement of Ukrainian military equipment, as well as the locations of incoming Russian missile and drone strikes.

Common practice

“You get in there, they lock you in, and you end up talking to this… well, it’s pretty obvious it’s either a KGB agent or someone from the FSB. <…> They’re basically trying to get you to hand over information”, one of the Telegram chat participants told BIC on condition of anonymity. He claims that he travelled to the European Union by illegally crossing the border between Ukraine and Belarus.

“They were asking about movements of military equipment. <…> What did you see? What didn’t you see? Where things hit and where they didn’t. I mean Shaheds, missiles”, another chat participant added.

A BIC journalist called the Homel Border Guard Group hotline to find out who is conducting the interrogations. “Nobody would tell you this”, was the reply.

Andrii Demchenko, assistant head of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, has said that the Belarusian route is becoming a more popular way to escape Ukraine. In 2025, border guards detained 1,424 men of draft age at the Ukrainian-Belarusian border — four times the number detained in 2024. We provided more details on this in the news article “Fourfold rise in Ukrainians caught fleeing to Belarus to avoid conscription”. In the same publication, we mentioned our conversation with someone who offered to help organise an escape to Belarus in exchange for a monetary reward. He said that interrogations are a common practice and that there is no reason to be afraid of them.

Beneficial interrogations

In a commentary to BIC, BelPol public representative Uladzimir Zhyhar said that the influx of evaders to Belarus is beneficial to Aleksandr Lukashenko’s system.

“These people are registered and monitored, after which they are taken to the border with the European Union. <…> Because their main objective has, in essence, been achieved — gathering information”.

Andrei Soldatov, the editor-in-chief of Agentura.ru, suggests that “this information could have been presented to, or promised to, [the Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei] Naryshkin; [the Director of the FSB, Aleksandr] Bortnikov; or [Vladimir Putin’s aide, Nikolai] Patrushev”.

According to the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, most Ukrainian evaders attempting to escape via Belarus were detained in 2025 in the border areas of Rivne and Zhytomyr Regions, and less frequently in Volyn, Kyiv and Chernihiv Regions.