{"id":496629,"date":"2025-11-14T16:58:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T13:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=496629"},"modified":"2025-11-14T18:32:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T15:32:24","slug":"current-time-belarus-ceases-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/current-time-belarus-ceases-operations","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCurrent Time Belarus\u201d Ceases Operations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>The Belarusian service of Current Time is shutting down. On 14 November 2025, the Belarusian Association of Journalists confirmed that for half of the staff of Current Time Belarus, today was their last working day. The rest are expected to be dismissed soon.<\/p>\n<p>The Current Time Belarus newsroom is closing entirely. This was confirmed by the channel\u2019s general director <b>Pavel Butorin<\/b>, who noted that the channel would not be able to offer the team \u2014 neither fully nor partially \u2014 any new positions.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWe constantly assess our projects and adjust them in line with shifting priorities and developments. The closure of the Belarusian service of Current Time took place amid RFE\/RL\u2019s critically important reforms aimed at optimizing resources.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>We are incredibly proud of the materials produced by the newsroom \u2014 they are impressive. RFE\/RL remains fully committed to its audience in Belarus and will continue to provide objective news and information in Belarusian and Russian,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Current Time is a television channel created by Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty (RFE\/RL) with the participation of Voice of America and funded through U.S. Congress grants via the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).<\/p>\n<p>Current Time Belarus was part of the Current Time channel, launched in 2023 specifically for the Russian-speaking audience in Belarus. The project sought to provide Belarusians with important and useful information free of censorship, covering events inside the country and abroad.<\/p>\n<p>On 14 March, U.S. President <b>Donald Trump<\/b> signed an order to reduce seven federal agencies, including USAGM. The document also terminated the grant that financed RFE\/RL\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n<p>In mid-April 2025, staff of the Belarusian service were forced to take administrative leave due to financial difficulties. The work was later restored, but, as it turned out, only briefly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Belarusian service of Current Time is shutting down. On 14 November 2025, the Belarusian Association of Journalists confirmed that for half of the staff of Current Time Belarus, today was their last working day. The rest are expected to be dismissed soon. The Current Time Belarus newsroom is closing entirely. This was confirmed by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":496628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/69174b90e75ef.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"\u201cCurrent Time Belarus\u201d Ceases Operations"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142338],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","permalink_manager":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}