KGB officers offered to free jailed Catholic priest Fr Henryk Okolotovich and allow him to return to his parish if he agreed to invite the Vatican nuncio to visit and covertly plant a flash drive on him. He refused, telling the KGB that "what you demand of me, is a crime, and I cannot betray God, any more than I can carry out this action". KGB officers said they would visit him again in prison "many more times, so that perhaps you will change your mind", released political prisoner Andrey Krylov told the Christian Vision group.

The KGB's attempted recruitment of Fr Okolotovich took place at the KGB Investigation Prison in the capital Minsk, either following his November 2023 arrest or in summer 2025 (see below).

Forum 18 was unable to reach KGB officers in Minsk. The duty officer at the KGB for Mogilev Region – the region where Fr Okolotovich is being held - put the phone down when Forum 18 called on 30 October (see below).

The official who answered the phone in Minsk on 31 October of Deputy Plenipotentiary for Religious and Ethnic Affairs Sergei Gerasimenya said Gerasimenya was not available. "I am not authorised to answer and questions," he told Forum 18 and put the phone down.

Officers of the KGB secret police (which has retained the same name since the Soviet period) appear to be part of a programme to enforce the regime's policies, including in the area of religion. "The KGB aims to identify and crush any threats to the regime," one individual who closely follows religious affairs told Forum 18. "It has no separate religious policy. It treats parishes and religious communities the same as it does businesses or any other organisation" (see below).

KGB officers seek to pressure religious leaders to sign commitments to cooperate and force them to attend regular meetings where the KGB assigns tasks to them. KGB officers particularly target religious leaders who have studied or have connections in Ukraine or Poland, or who have contacts with individuals believed to be part of the foreign-based opposition to the regime. It has also sent spies to Belarusian religious communities abroad (see below).

KGB officers also try to recruit informers in religious communities who will report on developments the KGB is interested in. Such informers covertly record sermons or talks in meetings for worship and inform the KGB if they believe the recordings contain comments the KGB might be concerned about. The KGB then summons such religious leaders to ask why they have made specific comments (see below).

The KGB can pressure religious leaders to have community members perceived as oppositionists leave the religious community, or at least remove such individuals from any leading role in the community. Officers summoned one Catholic priest to demand that he remove an individual from a role in the parish. The priest did not wish to do so, but felt obliged to request the individual to withdraw from the role voluntarily. "The priest pointed to the situation we were living in when making the request," the individual told Forum 18. The individual acceded to the priest's request (see below).

Religious leaders do not like talking about any links or contacts with the KGB secret police. Some are ashamed, fearing a loss of prestige if their links become public. Others fear retribution from the regime on themselves or their relatives.

Religious leaders and others Forum 18 spoke to in October asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject and fear of regime reprisals on them or others.

Increased regime control from 2020

The regime's control over society – including religious communities – increased after its violent suppression of protests over the falsified presidential elections in 2020.

The regime's control of religious communities tightened still further following the entry into force in July 2024 of a new Religion Law. Exercise of freedom of religion or belief without state permission remains banned. All registered religious communities were required to submit re-registration applications by 5 July 2025. Officials have refused to give detailed figures for how many religious communities have and have not received the compulsory re-registration.

In summer 2025, officials again questioned many church leaders about what they think about Russian President Vladimir Putin, those close to them told Forum 18. The church leaders considered such questions strange. Officials had asked similar questions in earlier years, others noted.

KGB "aims to identify and crush any threats to the regime"

"The KGB aims to identify and crush any threats to the regime," one individual who closely follows religious affairs told Forum 18. "It has no separate religious policy. It treats parishes and religious communities the same as it does businesses or any other organisation."

The individual noted that on the local level, the Ideology Departments of local Executive Committees play a leading role in enacting the regime's religious policy. However, the KGB secret police leads on any development that the regime considers threatens or could threaten its rule.

Even if the KGB does not devise the regime's policy to control religious communities, it plays a role in enacting this policy. "The regime tries to incriminate the Church and its priests as spies," a religious leader now out of Belarus told Forum 18. "The KGB has one goal: to find enemies. The regime needs external enemies."

The religious leader said instructions on religious policy come from the Presidential Administration. "The KGB then carries out the instructions. The Plenipotentiary [for Religious and Ethnic Affairs] is not important."

The regime's control over society – including religious communities – increased after its violent suppression of protests over the falsified presidential elections in 2020, several individuals told Forum 18.

KGB tried to use jailed priest to entrap nuncio?

From 2005, Catholic priest Fr Henryk (Gennady) Okolotovich (born 8 April 1960) was the parish priest of St Joseph's Church in Volozhin in Minsk Region, 75 kms northwest of the city of Minsk.

On 16 November 2023, officials arrested Fr Okolotovich and detained him in the KGB secret police Investigation Prison in Minsk. During the investigation, Fr Okolotovich faced pressure to implicate the country's Catholic bishops. He refused to do so.

On 30 December 2024, Minsk Regional Court handed him an 11-year jail term on treason charges at a closed trial. Among other things he was accused of sending abroad information about military aircraft at a base near his parish. He was also ordered to pay a massive financial penalty. Fr Okolotovich vigorously rejected the accusations.

On 1 April 2025, a week before his 65th birthday, the Supreme Court in Minsk rejected Fr Okolotovich's appeal. Hearings were again closed. He was then sent to a Labour Camp in Bobruisk to begin serving his sentence.

In summer 2025, the KGB secret police came to Fr Okolotovich in prison in Bobruisk, "most likely to force him to slander parishioners or other clergy of the Catholic Church", released political prisoner Andrey Krylov told the Christian Vision group on 13 September. Krylov had been imprisoned in Bobruisk with Fr Okolotovich, as well as another jailed Catholic priest Fr Andrei Yukhnevich.

The prison authorities transferred Fr Okolotovich for several weeks to the KGB pre-trial detention centre in Minsk. There, they gave him some papers to read, and apparently made him sign them. "There was some paper missing, and they said it couldn't be delivered by mail or special courier because it was a highly sensitive, classified document, so they took him there themselves," Krylov recalled.

The prison authorities then returned Fr Okolotovich to Correctional Colony No. 2 in Bobruisk.

"Then they summoned him and said the KGB would come and talk to him," Krylov recounted about Fr Okolotovich. "They told him he owed a million Euros, and you understand that you have as much to do with these planes and this million Euros as I do with ballet. That's not true, you know that, but you sign these documents. And then we'll release you, Okolotovich, and you'll be free. We won't do anything else to you."

Fr Okolotovich told Krylov that the KGB was requesting that, after being freed and sent back to serve in his parish in Volozhin, he invite the Vatican nuncio to visit the parish. "And secretly, as if by accident, hand over a flash drive to the Vatican ambassador. That is, to create incriminating evidence against the ambassador. But Okolotovich refused."

Fr Okolotovich said he told the KGB that "what you demand of me, is a crime, and I cannot betray God, any more than I can carry out this action". KGB officers said they would visit him again in prison "many more times, so that perhaps you will change your mind", Krylov recalled.

It remains unclear whether the KGB's attempt to pressure Fr Okolotovich to take part in a plot to compromise the Apostolic Nuncio to Belarus came during his detention in the KGB Investigation Prison in Minsk following his November 2023 arrest or in summer 2025 after he had been transferred back to that prison from the camp in Bobruisk.

From 2020 to 2024, the Apostolic Nuncio to Belarus was Archbishop Ante Jozić. Pope Francis appointed Ignazio Ceffalia as the new Apostolic Nuncio on 25 March 2025. He was consecrated an Archbishop on 22 May. He arrived in Belarus in late June.

It remains unclear how the KGB might have intended to compromise the Apostolic Nuncio. As an accredited diplomat, he and his staff have diplomatic status and thus immunity.

The duty officer at the KGB for Mogilev Region put the phone down when Forum 18 called on 30 October.

The prison address for Fr Okolotovich and Fr Yukhnevich:

213800, Mogilevskaya oblast
g. Bobruisk
ul. Sikorskogo d. 1
Ispravitelnaya koloniya No. 2 upravleniya DIN Ministerstva vnutrennikh del po Mogilevskoi oblasti

KGB spies in religious communities

Officials often openly visit religious communities to inspect them and listen to what is said in meetings for worship, numerous individuals told Forum 18. The regime has long used informers in religious communities.

KGB officers also try to recruit informers in religious communities who will report on developments the KGB is interested in and also monitor religious leaders' social media. Such informers covertly record sermons or talks in meetings for worship and inform the KGB if they believe the recordings contain comments the KGB might be concerned about. The KGB then summons such religious leaders to ask why they have made specific comments and threaten them with punishment.

"Some community members signed documents to say they would report on me," one religious leader told Forum 18. "Some signed but didn't tell me. Others told me, but said they had done so under pressure. When people come into the KGB office, they have no alternative but to sign. So many signed."

When the KGB summoned the religious leader, officers "said they know all about me", the religious leader added. Officers gave facts that could only have come from informers.

KGB tries to remove perceived oppositionists from roles in religious communities

Under the repressive new Religion Law, that came into force on 5 July 2024, individuals who are on either the "List of organisations and individuals involved in terrorist activities" or the "List of citizens of the Republic of Belarus, foreign citizens or stateless persons involved in extremist activities" are banned from being leaders or founders of registered religious organisations.

Leaders of religious communities whose ordinary members include those the regime perceives as oppositionists are in a delicate situation. The KGB can summon the religious leaders and try to extract information about the individuals, or can ask the religious leader to have the individuals leave the religious community, or at least remove such individuals from any leading role in the community.

The KGB summoned one Catholic priest several years ago to demand that he remove a perceived oppositionist from a role in the parish. The priest did not wish to do so, but felt obliged to request the individual to withdraw from the role voluntarily. "The priest pointed to the situation we were living in when making the request," the individual told Forum 18. The individual acceded to the priest's request.

KGB suspects leaders who studied in Ukraine, Poland

The regime has poor relations with several of its neighbours, including Poland to the west and Ukraine to the south. The regime's relations with Russia to the east are close.

The KGB secret police is particularly concerned about religious leaders who studied in seminaries and colleges in Ukraine or Poland and have returned to serve in religious communities in Belarus. "Priests who studied in Ukraine or Poland face more intense scrutiny," an individual familiar with religious communities told Forum 18.

"Protestants and Greek Catholics who studied in Ukraine are under suspicion," one foreign-based Belarusian told Forum 18.

Most Greek Catholic priests have gained their religious education in seminaries in western Ukraine, the heartland of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Some Protestant pastors studied in Protestant colleges in Ukraine after independence in 1991. Some Orthodox clergy also studied in Ukraine.

One religious leader who had studied earlier in Ukraine was detained several years ago for an administrative violation. In return for dropping the case, the KGB forced the individual to sign a co-operation agreement.

Many Roman Catholic priests earlier studied in universities or Catholic seminaries in neighbouring Poland. The regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko has pressured the Roman Catholic Church to reduce the number of priests from Poland serving in parishes in the country and to train more clergy at the seminary in Grodno.

It appears the KGB secret police does not have significant concerns about religious leaders – particularly of the Orthodox Church – who have studied in Russia.

KGB suspects leaders with contacts with perceived oppositionists abroad

The KGB secret police is particularly concerned about religious leaders who have travelled abroad, particularly to Western European countries, and who they believe have had contact there with individuals or organisations (political, cultural or religious) that the regime considers part of the opposition.

Among such foreign-based religious organisations is the Belarusian parish of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Parish priests Fr Georgi Roi (who faces a criminal case in Belarus and was added at Belarus' request to Russia's wanted list in 2024) and Fr Aleksandr Kukhta left Belarus in April 2023. The two then left the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ecumenical Patriarchate accepted them. They established the parish in Vilnius, holding their first service (for Easter Sunday) in a Lutheran church in April 2023. The parish then found its own premises in the city centre.

On 20 October 2023, Baranovichi District and City Court declared the Telegram channel of the Belarusian Orthodox parish in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius "extremist". Exactly one week later, the Inspectorate for Supervision of Telecommunications blocked access in Belarus to the Telegram channel on the basis of the Information Ministry's decision, the Inspectorate's website notes.

KGB spies on religious communities abroad

The KGB secret police also has spies in religious communities serving Belarusians outside the country, foreign-based religious leaders told Forum 18. Their task appears to be to report back on individuals perceived to be opponents of the regime – whether the leaders or members of the communities – and any opposition statements or plans.

"Extremist" groups, media, websites

Human rights groups – such as Viasna (Spring) and Human Constanta – and independent media outlets are among the many groups courts, the Interior Ministry or the KGB secret police have declared "extremist".

Anyone who shares, copies or likes material from a site deemed "extremist" risks punishment under Administrative Code Article 19.11 ("Distribution, production, storage and transportation of information products containing calls for extremist activities, or promoting such activities").

Anyone joining or providing information or an interview to such a site risks punishment under Criminal Code Article 361-1 ("Creation of or participation in an extremist organisation") or Criminal Code Article 361-4 ("Supporting extremist activity").

The regime has banned as "extremist" and blocked many news websites and social media channels related to religion.

Human rights defenders from various Christian Churches across Belarus formed the group Christian Vision in September 2020, amid protests against the falsified presidential elections, to document violations of freedom of religion or belief and other human rights. (The group is currently registered, under the name Christian Vision for Belarus, in Lithuania.)

On 18 August 2023, the Inspectorate for Supervision of Telecommunications blocked access in Belarus to Christian Vision's website on the basis of the Information Ministry's decision, the Inspectorate's website notes.

Between August 2023 and March 2024, several courts declared Christian Vision's Telegram channel (twice), Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki pages, and logo "extremist".

On 1 April 2025, the KGB secret police ruled that Christian Vision, its website and social media channels are "extremist" and are banned. Also identified were three people linked to the group: Natallia Vasilevich, Natallia Harkovich and Dzmitry Korneyenko. (All three, who are Orthodox Christians, are outside Belarus.) The decision came into force on being issued. The Interior Ministry added the group to its list of "extremist" organisations on 8 April.

Neither the KGB, nor the Interior Ministry nor the courts has ever informed Christian Vision of their "extremism" declarations. "We only found out when the [extremism] lists were updated," Orthodox theologian and human rights defender Vasilevich, the group's coordinator, told Forum 18 in May.

On 23 January 2024, Baranovichi District and City Court declared Christians Against War's Telegram channel "extremist". One month later, the Inspectorate for Supervision of Telecommunications blocked access in Belarus to the Telegram channel on the basis of the Information Ministry's decision, the Inspectorate's website notes.

In July 2024, the Information Ministry listed independent Catholic news website Katolik.life as "extremist". In August 2024, a court in Minsk Region declared Katolik.life's Telegram channel "extremist". One month later, the Inspectorate for Supervision of Telecommunications blocked access in Belarus to the Telegram channel on the basis of the Information Ministry's decision, the Inspectorate's website notes.

On 27 August 2025, by decision of Grodno's Lenin District Court, the Information Ministry added all Katolik.life and Gomel Catholic's social media pages (including on X, Instagram, Threads, Telegram, VKontakte and Facebook) to the list of "extremist materials". This also covers any logos, stickers, or images featuring the Katolik.life branding.

On 15 March 2025, Liozna District Court in Vitebsk Region declared the Facebook page Prayer for Belarus "extremist". The page – which was last updated in March 2021 - featured prayer appeals related to various events — especially in the lead-up to Freedom Day (celebrated by non-regime Belarusians on 25 March). On 20 October, the Inspectorate for Supervision of Telecommunications blocked access in Belarus to the Facebook page on the basis of the Information Ministry's decision, the Inspectorate's website notes.

Sweeping bans on internet resources also includes those not entirely dedicated to religious materials but which include some material. These include news sites, as well as libraries of online literature. One such site, which describes itself as a "Belarusian internet library" and contains a section with online books about religion and religious issues, is kamunikat.org. Minsk's Central District Court declared it "extremist" on 26 September. On 20 October, the Inspectorate for Supervision of Telecommunications blocked access in Belarus to the website on the basis of the Information Ministry's decision, the Inspectorate's website notes. (END)

More reports on freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Belarus

For background information, see Forum 18's Belarus religious freedom survey

Forum 18's compilation of Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) freedom of religion or belief commitments

Follow us on Bluesky @Forum18

Follow us on Facebook @Forum18NewsService

Follow us on Telegram @Forum18NewsService

Follow us on WhatsApp Forum 18

Follow us on X/Twitter @Forum_18

All Forum 18 material may be referred to, quoted from, or republished in full, if Forum 18 is credited as the source.

All photographs that are not Forum 18's copyright are attributed to the copyright owner. If you reuse any photographs from Forum 18's website, you must seek permission for any reuse from the copyright owner or abide by the copyright terms the copyright owner has chosen.

© Forum 18 News Service. All rights reserved. ISSN 1504-2855.