Seventeen-year-old Hrodna blogger Mikhail Dragun, who was detained after organizing a fundraiser for the treatment of nine-year-old Vanya Stsiatsienka, has been sentenced to one and a half years in prison. The court’s decision, announced on July 16, was reported by his partner Yauheniya Tarasenka on her Telegram channel.
According to her, the defense intends to appeal the verdict.
“I do not agree with the decision. There is no ‘defamation’ offense there. When Misha gets out, if he wants to, he will tell what really happened. You will understand everything yourselves. There are also plenty of nuances regarding the second charge,” she wrote.
Tarasenka said that Dragun had also been ordered to pay court costs and compensation for damages under the defamation charge.
“The lawyer will file an appeal. While the appeal is being prepared and considered, every day counts as two. All the days he previously spent in the pretrial detention center count as one day for two. So, at most, another two to three months and he will be home. Of course, all of this is very upsetting for me,” she noted.
As previously reported, in the summer of 2025, Dragun organized a fundraising campaign on Instagram. It was claimed that more than 2 million Belarusian rubles had been transferred to accounts linked to the blogger, but only a small portion of the money reached the child’s family.
Thirty-seven-year-old Yauheniya Tarasenka (@jennie.t) and 17-year-old Mikhail Dragun (iceedvard) were detained on November 4, 2025. Criminal proceedings against the woman were later dropped. The Ministry of Internal Affairs claimed that the bloggers had misappropriated most of the funds raised for Vanya Stetsenko’s treatment. The child has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and $2.9 million was being raised to purchase the drug Elevidys for his treatment.
According to the ministry, of the 1.5 million Belarusian rubles collected, about 200,000 were transferred to the boy’s mother, 315,000 were spent on prizes for followers, and the remaining money was used for rental housing, entertainment, holidays, and other personal expenses. During questioning, the blogger admitted that he had transferred several times less money for the child’s treatment than he had spent on himself and gifts for his followers.
In early December, it was reported that the fundraising campaign for Vanya Stetsenko had been closed. The remaining amount was transferred from the funds seized from Dragun and Tarasenka.
During the investigation, another episode was uncovered, leading to an additional criminal case under Article 188 of the Criminal Code (defamation). Investigators alleged that Dragun accused an 18-year-old woman from Hrodna of stealing 50,000 Belarusian rubles in posts on his Instagram account. Dragun denied the charge and told the investigator that the woman, whom he described as his friend, had “cheated me out of my money.”
