Gennady Savritsky

Gennady Savritsky, a 61-year-old former businessman from Minsk, was recently sentenced to five years in a penal colony for creating a video in 2020 that called for an end to violence amid protests in Belarus. The video, which included footage of protests and a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, was deemed to incite social hatred under Belarusian law. Savritsky maintained that he recorded the video out of emotional response to the violence he witnessed online and involved his family in the production.