“A Word of Freedom for Poland”, the Belarusian style

In 2024, the international radio station Belarus, part of the Belteleradiocompany media holding, began broadcasting in Polish. They launched a multimedia news and analysis project called “A Word of Freedom for Poland”, which is essentially a six-hour-long attempt to convince Poles that life under Aliaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus is great.

Buro discovered that the production of this propaganda radio programme involved citizens of the European Union, who had sought refuge under Lukashenka’s umbrella due to criminal prosecution in their home countries.

Among the co-authors of “A Word of Freedom for Poland” is former Polish judge Tomasz Szmydt.

Tomasz Szmydt. Source: sb.by

In May 2024, he applied for political asylum in Belarus, criticising Poland for restricting freedom of speech and for its aggressive stance on Lukashenka’s and Putin’s policies. Polish prosecutors have opened a criminal case against the fugitive former judge for espionage, adding him to the national wanted list.

In Belarus, he secured a position at the state news agency BelTA and began collaborating with the international radio station Belarus, which is responsible for producing “A Word of Freedom for Poland”. In 2024, he “won” the tender for the Belteleradiocompany project (in a single-source procurement), which involved creating 110 Polish-language scripts, with each episode timed at 360 minutes. The pro-regime media holding paid him 22,000 Belarusian rubles (approximately 6,300 euros) for this work. In 2025, however, he had been paid 54,600 rubles (almost 15,300 euros) for writing 273 scripts for “A Word of Freedom for Poland”.

We also found Edikas Jagelavičius, a Lithuanian, among the authors of the radio programme.

Edikas Jagelavičius. Source: sb.by

In 2024, Belteleradiocompany paid him 37,000 Belarusian rubles (equivalent to € 10,500) for creating 185 scripts for the programme “A Word of Freedom for Poland”. He was paid a further 54,600 rubles (almost 15,300 euros) for 273 programmes released in 2025.

Jagelavičius is on a criminal wanted list in his home country and is a suspect in a case involving the alleged aiding of other states in actions against Lithuania. In 2022, the Lithuanian acted as an “observer” at the Russian “annexation referendum” in occupied Ukrainian territories. The Russian Ministry of Defence organised the trip, and the “referendum” itself was held under the armed control of Russian military forces, with residents being forced to vote “in favour of joining Moscow”. Additionally, Jagelavičius was a member of the International Good Neighbourhood Forum organisation and an associate of Algirdas Paleckis, who was convicted of spying for Russia. In 2025, Jagelavičius made his appearance at Lukashenka’s seventh election, with BelTA presenting him as “an independent international observer from Lithuania”.

In an interview, Jagelavičius said that he had been living in Belarus since July 2022. He was likely forced to leave the EU immediately following his visit to the Russian “referendum”. He made this comment in the programme of Roman Samul, a Latvian fugitive who has also recently settled in Belarus.

Roman Samul. Source: belta.by

Samul was among the founders of the Antifascists of the Baltics Telegram channel in Latvia. In November 2022, the Latvian State Security Service initiated a criminal case against this association. According to the agency, the Antifascists of the Baltics association allegedly acted against Latvia’s national security interests by collecting non-public information and passing it on to Russian special services. In October 2023, Roman Samul and five other founders of the Antifascists of the Baltics were charged with espionage in favour of Russia by Latvian prosecutors.

In Belarus, the state propaganda machine portrays Samul as both a blogger and a public figure. However, Buro has learned that the Latvian spy also works as a scriptwriter on the radio programme “A Word of Freedom for Poland”. Over the course of two years, Roman Samul wrote 304 scripts, earning 60,800 Belarusian rubles (approximately €17,000) in the process.

Another foreign criminal, Italian Davide Carbonaro, receives honoraria from Belteleradiocompany.

Davide Carbonaro. Source: sb.by

In two years, he “won” tenders totalling 76,000 Belarusian rubles (almost 21,500 euros) through the state procurement process. He undertook to write 313 scripts in Polish for this money.

In his own words, the Milan native moved to Poland 20 years ago to head a branch of the Italian firm he worked for. The Belarusian media outlet Belsat found out that Carbonaro “had amassed a significant number of criminal cases in Poland”. For example, in 2020, he was charged with fraud and tax evasion. He pleaded guilty and received a 1.5-year suspended sentence. In July 2024, his travel ban was lifted, and he left for Italy before fleeing to Belarus and claiming that he intended to request political asylum from Lukashenka because he had “suffered as a result of his journalistic activities”. This referred to his collaboration with the Wbrew Cenzurze (”Contrary to Censorship”) project, a YouTube channel with 24,000 subscribers. It published interviews with Alexander Dugin, the ideologue of the “Russian World”; Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry; Tomasz Szmydt; and Aliaksei Dzermant, a Belarusian propagandist.

Aliaksei Dzermant. Source: sb.by

In fact, we also came across Dzermant when exploring the “A Word of Freedom for Poland” author collective. He collaborated with the radio programme in 2024, earning 50,000 Belarusian rubles (equivalent to 14,200 euros) for his scriptwriting work.

Other well-known propagandists from the Belteleradiocompany include Radzivon Popiel, Piotr Piatrouski and Aleh Kukhalski. There are also the Polish “dissidents” Paweł Jański and Daniel Mikusek; the “journalists” Maria Krusheuskaya and Arkadz Hartunh from the pro-governmental publication Belarus Segodnya; and even archpriest Yury Zaloska.

According to data from the state procurement website, Belteleradiocompany has spent almost 1.5 million Belarusian rubles (approximately 410,000 euros) from the state budget on paying pro-government scriptwriters to disseminate propaganda to the Polish audience over the past two years.

In addition to “A Word of Freedom for Poland”, the international radio station Belarus produces the programmes “Your Friend, Belarus” in Chinese, and “Meet Belarus” in Arabic, which have been broadcast since 2020. The station also broadcasts “Belarus in the World Community” in French, which began airing in 2024. The treasury was left with a bill for another 155,000 Belarusian rubles (more than 40,000 euros) for these shows.