Jarosław Pisarenko was once a familiar face to Belarusian football fans: a young sports journalist who interviewed top players and presented weekend football shows. Today he is an exile in Poland, a man who says the Belarusian security services tried to force him to confess that his work was financed and directed from Warsaw — a confession he refused to give. The interview with Pisarenko was published by the Polish outlet Onet on 30 September 2025.

A short career, a long shadow

Pisarenko, now 30, told Onet how his professional life unraveled after he left state television during the mass protests that followed the disputed August 2020 election in Belarus. He described being detained, interrogated and held in the notorious Okrestina (Akrestsina) detention centre in Minsk — a facility that became a symbol of the state’s violent response to the protests. In the interview he recounts the cell: about four by four metres, packed with a dozen men, where sleeping was impossible and nights became a game of “Tetris” as inmates arranged themselves on the floor.

“Admit you’re funded by Warsaw”

According to Pisarenko, interrogators pressured him to sign a statement admitting that his media work and projects (which he says were purely sport-focused) were in fact a cover for activities “financed by Warsaw and Vilnius” and intended to undermine President Alexander Lukashenko. When he refused, the pressure escalated: classification as an “extremist group,” court cases in absentia, and a seven-year sentence waiting for him in Belarus if he returns.

Okrestina and the wider crackdown

Pisarenko’s account fits into a broader pattern documented by international rights groups and journalists: after the August 2020 election Belarusian authorities detained thousands of protesters and subjected many to beatings, torture and cruel detention conditions. Human Rights Watch and other organisations have specifically reported on systematic beatings and ill-treatment of detainees and described conditions at the Okrestina detention facility as abusive and inhumane. The repression that followed the 2020 protests has left a long trail of prosecutions, forced exiles and a weakened independent media environment.

Flight, adaptation, and a new life in Poland

Pisarenko explained that he first left Belarus for Kyiv and then moved to Warsaw after the 2022 escalation of war in Ukraine made life in Ukraine precarious for Belarusians. He now works on video editing and co-hosts a YouTube channel with a friend from Belarus. Although he says he likes life in Poland — he is learning Polish, enjoys local culture, and sees Poland as a beacon of civic freedom — he also warns that attitudes toward migrants have hardened in some quarters and that integration can be difficult. He has not returned to see his parents since 2023 and fears for friends and colleagues who remain in Belarus.

Pisarenko’s testimony is one of many personal narratives that illuminate how political repression in Belarus since 2020 has reached beyond street protesters to target journalists, cultural figures and ordinary citizens. Forced confessions, publicised “admissions,” and criminal classification of civil activity as “extremism” are tactics that have been used repeatedly to silence dissent and to delegitimise independent voices. International reporting shows that, despite occasional releases, the country continues to hold large numbers of political prisoners and to pursue charges against activists and journalists.

The full, in-depth interview with Jarosław Pisarenko — including his descriptions of interrogation, the cramped conditions in Okrestina, the slow unraveling of his television career, and his hopes and fears for the future — was published by Przegląd Sportowy / Onet on 30 September 2025. For readers who want to read Pisarenko’s account in Polish and in full, see the Onet piece.