August 28, Pozirk. Belarusian journalist and prominent Polish minority activist Andrej Pačobut (Andrzej Poczobut) confirmed on Thursday, four months after his early release from prison, that he plans to return to Belarus despite the risk of politically motivated persecution.
“No one will give me any guarantees as to how Belarusian authorities will respond,” the 53-year-old Pačobut was quoted as saying by TVN24 during Campus Polska Przyszłości, an annual youth forum in Olsztyn.
Pačobut said that he intends to go back to “expand the space of freedom” of expression. Referring to another recently released political prisoner Mikałaj Statkievič, who comments on political developments despite staying in Belarus, Pačobut said that the country still has “free space,” although this is not “100-percent freedom.”
Speaking in Poland’s Senate on May 20, Pačobut said that he would return to Belarus no later than September.
The journalist, known as a contributor to Gazeta Wyborcza, was arrested in March 2021. In February 2023, Judge Dźmitryj Bubienčyk of the Hrodna Regional Court sentenced Pačobut to eight years in prison, finding him guilty of inciting hatred and calling for sanctions. Human rights defenders recognized him as a political prisoner.
Belarusian authorities freed Pačobut on April 28, 2026, deporting him to Poland. The release came after John Coale, the US special envoy for Belarus, met with Polish President Karol Nawrocki and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski in Warsaw on April 27.
Minsk also liberated Polish monk Grzegorz Gaweł and Polish national Tomasz Bieroza as part of a five-for-five exchange at the Belarusian-Polish border.
On May 3, Nawrocki presented Poland’s highest state award, the Order of the White Eagle, to Pačobut. In 2025, the European Parliament granted the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to the political prisoner.
