Александр Лапшин. Фото: https://www.facebook.com
Blogger Alyaksandr Lapshyn was detained on March 19 at Yerevan airport at the request of the Belarusian authorities. He was on his way to Strasbourg for legal matters, Radio Svaboda reported.
“I was departing from Yerevan and was detained again at Belarus’s request — for the sixth time. Belarus updated the charges. Because under the previous case, Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office decided to remove me from the wanted list. What did Belarus do? They issued a new search request. On exactly the same charges — insulting Lukashenka, calls for something. The standard set. And I was detained again. This time, the conduct of Armenia’s National Security Service was very rude,” he said.
According to him, during the detention he managed to call the police, who arrived three hours later. He was then released, but missed his flight.
“The police released me and explained that the search against me had been lifted. But the plane had already left. I was flying to Strasbourg on legal matters. Now I am back in Yerevan and will have to buy new, expensive tickets,” he said.
Lapshyn said he intends to file a lawsuit against Armenia’s border service and seek compensation.
His problems with the Belarusian authorities began in 2016, when he was detained in Belarus and extradited to Azerbaijan in connection with a criminal case over visits to Nagorno-Karabakh. In Azerbaijan, he was sentenced to three years in prison, but in September 2017 he was pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev and left for Israel. After his release, Lapshyn filed a complaint with the United Nations, which found that his rights had been violated.
In February 2026, an Armenian court ruled that the Belarusian charges contradict Armenian legal norms, but this has not prevented his repeated detentions during visits to the country.