Context: In April, YouTube removed the BelTA, ONT channels, as well asCTV’s main channel. Then, on September 14, the platform removed several Belarusian Radio channels, the Belarus-RTR channel, and those of several CTV projects. On September 18, Belarusian Minister of Information Dzmitry Zhuk stated that the authorities do not yet intend to block YouTube in response. He said that would be “the biggest mistake” and would mean giving in to “provocation.”
During broadcasts on Alpha Radio and SBTV on September 22, 2026, Ivan Eismant said state media had prepared alternative platforms in advance in case YouTube removed their channels. According to Eismant, viewson these platforms has increased significantly.
“Other platforms are developing rapidly. There has been a huge increase on alternative platforms. And people are watching us from the same locations they watched us YouTube. If we had tens or hundreds of millions of views from Ukraine, then people from Ukraine are visiting other platforms and watching us there. We can see where our viewers are watching from. If people watched us from Germany, they’re still watching us. Or from the United States of America.”
The Weekly Top Fake (WTF) team examined the view counts for CTV, ONT, and BelTA videos on Rutube and VK Video. Most of the videos on these platforms receive between a few dozen and a few hundred views.
In February 2026, the median number of views for ONT videos on Rutube was approximately 80. Half of the videos received fewer views, while the other half received more. After the channel was removed from YouTube, the median increased roughly fourfold, reaching 325 views. However, by September, the median had fallen nearly threefold.
The median number of views for CTV videos was about 100 views. After YouTube took the channel down in early April, the metric didn’t grow, and by September it had almost halved.
Because BelTA created a Rutube channel only after YouTube removed its channel, it is not possible to compare metrics before and after. Although the agency’s videos receive around 300 views, individual interviews with Russian experts are viewed several thousand times.
State media also publish videos on Videobel, a Belarusian service created as an alternative to YouTube. In addition to ONT, CTV, and BelTA, approximately a dozen other state media outlets also post content there. Videobel does not display individual video view counts. The Ministry of Information reports that the national platform receives 700,000 visitors per month. The Weekly Top Fake team could not find any independent confirmation of this figure. According to Similarweb, a website traffic analytics service, the site received approximately 17,000 visits in August, or about 550 per day on average.
Some short videos from state media outlets on TikTok have garnered hundreds of thousands of views. These outlets’ short videos also get views on VK Video. However, these outlets do not post full-length episodes and programs on TikTok..
The WTF team compared follower growth on the TikTok accounts of ONT, CTV, and BelTA before and after their YouTube channels were removed. We calculated the average daily increase in followers to compare periods of different lengths.
Before its channel was removed, ONT Life gained about 308 subscribers per day on average. Afterward, that number decreased to about 290. For CTV, the rate dropped from about 36 to 28 subscribers per day. Meanwhile, BelTA saw a slight increase, rising from approximately 76 to 81 subscribers per day. These changes do not suggest the sharp subscriber increase after the removal of channels from YouTube. The number of subscribers to the ONT Belarus account remained virtually unchanged from October 19, 2025 to September 27, 2026, at 19,300 and 19,600 subscribers, respectively.
Thus, the available data does not confirm a sharp, general increase in views of state media content on alternative platforms after YouTube removed their channels.
