The website of the Belarusian version of Komsomolskaya Pravda is unavailable at the moment.
When users attempt to visit kp.by, they see the following text: ‘Access to the information resource is restricted upon the decision of the Information Ministry’.
On the back of Tuesday’s shootout in Minsk, Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article in which an interviewee spoke positively about 31-year-old Andrey Zeltsar who shot down a KGB officer after they had broken into his apartment. This resulted in pro-government media and Telegram channel’s harshly criticizing the newspaper.
The Russian media have long been experiencing difficulties in Belarus, Vladimir Sungorkin, chief editor of the Russian Komsomolskaya Pravda, commented on the blocking of the Belarusian version.
“They have been banning Komsomolskaya Pravda from being printed and distributed in Belarus for more than a year. They think that we are reporting the events in Belarus improperly, they are sure that one may not write about Belarus the way we do,” Sungorkin told RBC.
He believes that the media outlet covers the situation in the country in an honest manner. The newspaper repeatedly appealed to the Belarusian authorities, including Alyaksandr Lukashenka, but in vain, the editor added.
In August 2020, Belarusian printing houses refused to accept Komsomolskaya Pravda’s orders, referring to ‘technical grounds’. According to the team, they were just trying to doing their best to provide the readers with unbiased and reliable information amid post-election protests in the country.
belsat.eu
