How the Maušuks from Pinsk live — in 2020, the husband and wife were jailed, and their children were to be sent to an orphanage

"BYSOL" organized a fundraiser for the family to support the couple after Siarhiej's release. You can participate here.

Siarhiej and Alena Maušuk were detained on August 10, 2020, for participating in post-election protests. On August 9, the Maušuks went to the Pinsk city executive committee to find out the voting results and found themselves in the center of a clash with security forces. Alena approached the line of security forces and hit their shields with her hands and a wooden stake, and Siarhiej also got involved.

As a result, Maušuk was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison, and his wife to 6 years. Both ended up in a strict regime colony for recidivists — their difficult past played a role.

But the Maušuks were released earlier. Alena was deported to Lithuania on February 12, 2025, and Siarhiej on March 19, 2026.

Currently, Alena and Siarhiej live together in Vilnius. Alena works as a cleaner in a gym, and her husband will only receive a residence permit in the coming weeks, after which he will be able to work officially.

A job will be found for him, Alena is confident:

"When he gets a Lithuanian residence permit, he'll find his footing; he's a tiler, a builder. We're not worried about that."

The woman recalls seeing her husband for the first time in almost six years:

"They called and said he was being taken to Lithuania. I took a taxi, met him, and we went home…

It was quite difficult morally until he came back down to earth and realized where he was and that he was free. I understand that I was probably the same after prison. Time passed, and he oriented himself a bit, learned the city, we walked with him around Vilnius — sometimes I showed him around, sometimes he walked alone."

Alena says that a painful topic for their family is their youngest daughter, 10-year-old Karyna. Her other children are adults, with their own families, and the Maušuks understand that they will not want to leave Belarus.

Alena has a 16-year-old daughter, Anhelina — like Karyna, she lives with relatives. But Anhelina has finished 9th grade and is entering 10th, so Alena and her husband decided not to bother her — saying, let her study. However, the couple would still like to move their youngest, their only joint daughter, Alena and Siarhiej's, to Vilnius so that "she could see a different life — maybe something would work out for her here."

Alena says that Siarhiej often mentions the little one.

"She is his only daughter, and it so happened that he didn't raise her because of prison […] There are breakdowns when he starts saying — how I want to hug my daughter, how I want to take her to play… It's very difficult," the woman shares.

Both Siarhiej and Alena were expelled from the country, so they cannot come and pick up their daughter, who is under the guardianship of Alena's elder daughter. Karyna's parents tried at least to find a lawyer to represent the Maušuks' interests — but lawyers say that Alena needs to come and sign the agreement on the spot:

"If the court is to return the child from guardianship to me, I also must be present at the court. There are many complications. And when I say that I cannot come, that I am forbidden to enter Belarus for political reasons, they immediately refuse me."

To find some way out, the Maušuks even spoke with American negotiators at the embassy. Alena communicates with her daughter via video call and says that it's not easy for Karyna either:

"The child is also nervous, it's noticeable when we talk to her. She loves her dad very much, she also wants to meet him sooner."

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