Paris, June 23, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release of Ukrainian journalist Vladislav Yesypenko and Belarusian journalist Ihar Karnei, who had been unjustly detained for years by Russia and Belarus, respectively.
Russia freed Yesypenko on June 20 after he served a five-year prison sentence on charges of possessing and transporting explosives, which he denied. Karnei, detained for nearly 2 years, was released along with 13 political prisoners, including opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski. The 14 were freed by Belarus on June 21 following a visit to Minsk by senior U.S. official Keith Kellogg, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general.
“CPJ celebrates that Vladislav Yesypenko and Ihar Karnei are now free and reunited with their families,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “The efforts and pressure of the international community must not stop here, as Russia and Belarus continue to hold dozens of journalists in connection with their work. They all should be released immediately.”
Russian Federal Security Service officers detained Yesypenko, a freelance correspondent for Krym.Realii, a Crimea-focused outlet run by U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in March 2021 in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea. He was initially sentenced to six years in prison, but the term was reduced by a year on appeal in August 2022.
Karnei, a former freelancer with RFE/RL, was detained in July 2023 and sentenced to three years in March 2024 on charges of participating in an extremist group — the Belarusian Association of Journalists, which had been the largest independent media association in the country until it was dissolved in 2021 and later labeled an extremist group. His sentence was extended by eight months in December 2024.
“RFE/RL extends its deepest gratitude to the U.S. and Ukrainian governments for working with us to ensure that Vlad’s unjust detention was not prolonged,” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement.
Karnei and Yesypenko’s releases come after sustained international pressure, including from CPJ, and after Andrey Kuznechyk, another RFE/RL journalist, was freed from a Belarusian prison in February.
Belarus is Europe’s worst jailer of journalists, with at least 31 behind bars as of December 1, 2024. Thirteen of the 30 journalists still detained by Russia are Ukrainian.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lauren Wolfe.