{"id":544181,"date":"2026-05-21T14:16:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=544181"},"modified":"2026-05-21T14:22:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:22:27","slug":"shabutski-sentenced-in-absentia-to-19-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/shabutski-sentenced-in-absentia-to-19-years-in-prison","title":{"rendered":"Shabutski Sentenced in Absentia to 19 Years in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>The Hrodna Regional Court on May 20 issued a verdict in absentia against blogger <strong><b>Maksim Shabutski<\/b><\/strong> under special proceedings.<\/p>\n<p>As the human rights centre <a href=\"https:\/\/spring96.org\/be\/news\/120306\">Viasna reports<\/a>, he was sentenced in absentia to 19 years of imprisonment in a medium-security penal colony and fined 3,500 base units (157,500 Belarusian rubles).<\/p>\n<p>In September 2025, the Investigative Committee initiated special proceedings against Shabutski. In October, the Hrodna Regional Prosecutor\u2019s Office announced that the case against the blogger had been referred to court.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, it was reported that Maksim Shabutski had been charged under more than 20 articles of the Criminal Code (Part 3 of Article 361, Part 3 of Article 130, Part 1 of Article 293, Part 1 of Article 342, Part 1 of Article 367, Part 2 of Article 367, Parts 1 and 2 of Article 368, Article 369, Article 391, Article 188, Article 369-1, Article 370, Part 2 of Article 361-2, Part 1 of Article 361-4 (as amended by the Law of the Republic of Belarus of May 26, 2021), Part 2 of Article 361-4, Parts 1, 2 and 3 of Article 361-1, Part 2 of Article 285, Part 1 of Article 361-3, Article 361-5 and Part 1 of Article 357).<\/p>\n<p>Shabutski was accused of creating in 2020 an \u201cextremist formation\u201d consisting of administrators, managers and participants of the YouTube channel \u201cMaksim Shabutski\u201d and the Telegram channel \u201cGroup Shabutski\u201d. He was also accused of posting \u201cinformation materials of an extremist nature\u201d on those and other resources belonging to him.<\/p>\n<p>Shabutski was also accused of participating in the Kalinouski Regiment, as well as creating the \u201cIndependent Belarusians\u201d bloc in the 2024 Coordination Council elections and participating in the third convocation of the Coordination Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hrodna Regional Court on May 20 issued a verdict in absentia against blogger Maksim Shabutski under special proceedings. As the human rights centre Viasna reports, he was sentenced in absentia to 19 years of imprisonment in a medium-security penal colony and fined 3,500 base units (157,500 Belarusian rubles). In September 2025, the Investigative Committee [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":544180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/6a0eeaf6401c4.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Shabutski Sentenced in Absentia to 19 Years in Prison"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338,143127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news","category-society"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544181","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\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}