Belarusian Security Forces Visit Relatives of Kamaroŭka Platform Founder

Reform.news Editorial Team · 16 October 2026, 11:04

https://reform.news/en/belarusian-security-forces-visit-relatives-of-kamarouka-platform-founder/

Belarusian security forces have launched a series of visits to relatives of marketplace Kamaroŭka founder Źmicier Zavadski, as well as marketing specialist Vola Kasianchuk and a former volunteer. Zavadski reported this on Facebook.

According to him, this happened after the platform was designated an “extremist formation” and the project began generating a profit. Zavadski said security officers had asked about his registered address, neighbours, mother and brother, and had also visited distant relatives whom he had not seen for about 15 years.

“At the end of December last year, when Kamaroŭka began to see its first successes, we experienced an abnormally high load on the website. There are grounds to suspect that this was a targeted DDoS attack. After I reported several months ago that the project was beginning to turn a profit, we were designated an ‘extremist formation’, and security officers in Belarus began visiting the relatives of Vola Kasianchuk and a former volunteer. In my case, they were interested in my registered address, neighbours, mother and brother, and today they even carried out a series of visits to distant relatives whom I had not seen for about 15 years,” he wrote.

According to Zavadski, the website is currently receiving around 3.8 million requests a day from nearly 100,000 IP addresses. He claims that most of the requests target sections that consume the most resources. This slows down the marketplace, causes errors and leads to payment failures in approximately one in five orders.

“Unfortunately, this affects the marketplace’s operations. The website is slower, users encounter errors, and payments fail in roughly one in five orders. The platform’s development has slowed considerably because we have to spend time and resources simply keeping it running,” he said.

“While Belarusian security officers are looking for my relatives, I continue looking for Belarusian manufacturers and sellers. And it seems we both still have a lot of work to do. Around 100 new products will be added to Kamaroŭka over the next month,” Zavadski added.

In July, the Kamaroŭka platform was added to Belarus’s list of “extremist formations”.

Belarusian authorities regularly use extremism charges to target political opponents and suppress dissent more broadly.