Николай Статкевич. Фото: @maryna.adamovic
Mikalai Statkevich has described how he was deprived of necessary medication in the colony and subjected to pressure through repeated placement in punitive confinement.
On his Telegram channel, he said that he was placed six times in a row for six months in a cell-type facility (PKT) — “a cell measuring 1×3 metres, with ‘walks’ of half an hour a day in a slightly larger, almost sealed metal box under a metal roof with artificial lighting even during the day.” In addition, he was placed in a punishment cell one or two times a month.
“This had never been done to anyone there before. Experienced inmates said that they were ‘killing me, as if from natural causes’. On top of that, the complete lack of information from the outside about my loved ones — and Maryna was then seriously and dangerously ill — also put strong pressure on me. It got to the point where one of the facility’s officials, through another inmate, passed me a ‘humane’ proposal: to request transfer to a ‘closed’ prison, where conditions are incomparably milder. I firmly refused, because in such places any sign of weakness would only provoke increased pressure,” Statkevich wrote.
To maintain his health, he said he walked a lot in his cell and exercised.
“So I maintained a fairly good condition for such circumstances, even after three bouts of COVID. At least I had enough strength for a final push at the limit. But during the refusal of deportation, I clearly understood that I would not simply be released, and I prepared for the worst,” he noted.
After the failed attempt to deport him from the country in September 2025, Statkevich said he was again placed in the colony, but medical parcels with medicines were no longer delivered to him, including the anti-thrombosis drug Xarelto prescribed after COVID. He believes this led to his stroke intentionally.
“I was told that they would provide their own ‘analogues’. For example, the preventive drug against blood clots, Xarelto, was replaced with aspirin. Later, in prison hospitals, doctors openly mocked — for some reason at me — because of this substitution and said that such a replacement in post-COVID conditions is unacceptable and that it was what caused my stroke. Thus, I have every reason to believe that this stroke was artificially and deliberately provoked,” the politician said.
Statkevich added that prison doctors did everything possible to minimise the consequences of the stroke.
“It did not affect any of my physical functions except speech. Now I feel well, my blood pressure is my usual 120/80. I have resumed physical exercise,” he wrote.
It should be recalled that Mikalai Statkevich was sentenced in 2021 in the “Tsikhanouski case” to 14 years in prison. In September 2025, he was among 52 political prisoners who were to be taken to Lithuania, but he refused to leave Belarus and ran out of the bus. After that, he was held for several months in a prison in Hlybokaye — this became known only after his release on February 19. On January 21, he suffered a stroke, which affected his speech. He is now at home in Minsk, but his documents have still not been issued, and his legal status remains undefined.