Lithuanian blogger who took tourists to the Chernobyl zone jailed in Belarus for politics

Deividas Stanulevičius is 27 years old, he is a resident of Vilnius.

Not much information about him can be found online. In his youth, the guy was fond of football and played as a defender for the amateur team «Granitas». Later, the young man was actively involved in automotive topics, reselling cars, and also organized minibus trips between Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus.

In recent years, he organized tourist excursions, including to the Belarusian part of the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

Stanulevičius maintained a blog on TikTok with almost 9,000 subscribers, as well as pages on Facebook and Instagram. There, he mainly covered two-day trips along the route Vilnius — Lida — Minsk — Gomel — Khoiniki with a visit to the Chernobyl zone and return. The price was 250 euros.

He last announced such a tour on February 23, 2026. At that time, he wrote that the next trip was planned for March 6. Soon after, Stanulevičius was arrested. Apparently, at the Belarusian border, as he did not publish anything from that tour.

Павялічыць

The Lithuanian was placed in a pre-trial detention center. Recently, the Minsk City Court found him guilty under Part 1 of Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code of Belarus («abetting extremist activity»). Stanulevičius is now serving his sentence.

The essence of the charges is not publicly known, as is usual in trials under political articles in Belarus.

Mass political repressions in the country began after 2020. At that time, Alexander Lukashenka lost to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya but did not hand over power to her, forcing her to leave the country. Mass popular protests took place. The authorities responded to this with repressions.

According to calculations by the «Belpol» law enforcement association and human rights defenders, the names of at least 10,050 people who faced politically motivated criminal cases are known. In total, various political repressions (criminal cases, administrative offenses, dismissals, searches, forced emigration) affected hundreds of thousands of Belarusians. 

The Belarusian authorities consider "extremism" to be the demand for free elections with transparent vote counting, as well as virtually any criticism of the authorities, pro-Russian historical narratives, expressions of solidarity with Ukraine, and anti-war speeches. 

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