Belarus’s Interior Ministry has added another 12 people to its “List of Citizens of the Republic of Belarus, Foreign Citizens or Stateless Persons Involved in Extremist Activity.”
Among those added is 25-year-old Ukrainian citizen and political prisoner Viktar Keler from Mazyr, Homiel Region. According to the Interior Ministry, a conviction handed down by the Homiel Regional Court under Parts 1 and 2 of Article 361-4 of the Belarusian Criminal Code (“facilitating extremist activity”) has entered into legal force. The ministry said Keller is serving his sentence. According to the Viasna Human Rights Centre, he was detained in January last year in connection with the “Hajun case.”
Belarusian Hajun was an OSINT monitoring project tracking the military activity of Russian and Belarusian forces. The monitoring group was established before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine by activist Anton Matolka. In early February 2025, Belarusian security forces gained access to the project’s chatbot. The project subsequently announced that it was ceasing operations.
The “extremist” list now contains 6,806 names.
The Belarusian authorities regularly use extremism-related charges to target political opponents and suppress dissent more broadly.