He refutes propagandists from BT, names the amount paid to the authorities by the founders of Tut.by, and also expresses his opinion on what the creator of the portal Yuri Zisser would have said and done.

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Here are fragments of the conversation

— Judge Valyantina Ziankevich sentenced former editor-in-chief Marina Zolatova and former general director Lyudmila Chekina to 12 years in prison each.

The closed court lasted more than two months - a total of 37 sessions were held.

Therefore, the essence of the accusations made by Zolotava and Chekina is unknown.

What and who were the authorities hiding at the closed trial?

- There is no real plot in the case.

There is no evidence that what they are accused of actually happened.

The film shown on BT is another confirmation.

Everything is far-fetched, invented, embellished, with propagandistic nonsense about the extremist orientation of the statements.

None of the accusations have any basis.

— The Tut.by portal has been working in Belarus for more than 20 years.

In May 2020, Tut.by broke a national record: 176 million visits to all pages of the site during the month.

In the last days before closing, the site was visited by 3.3 million unique users per day - every third resident of Belarus.

About 260 employees worked in the company, more than 70 - in the editorial office of the website.

Why are the authorities still afraid of Tut.by (this is evidenced by both the long terms and the movements of propagandists)?

- It's not a matter of fear of Tut.by, it's a matter of banal revenge, a banal order from somewhere, it's a matter of fear of those who are now in power, of inevitable changes that will lead some of them to prison, and some to Russia or Turkey, from where they will not be issued.

Besides being fear and revenge, it's a show business like so many others.

Such a beacon for those who continue to cover the events in Belarus from abroad, a beacon for those who want to do something independent, which contradicts the official "party line".

- I would not like to seriously comment on the work of propagandists, the dedicated portal, which they published on the eve of the verdict.

And, of course, I will not comment on what your colleagues said under duress.

But would you be able to refute the blatant falsehoods voiced by the propagandists?

Including the most obvious one, that Tut.by did not have its own developments, but was striving for the Park of high technologies.

- This is "the delirium of a gray mare."

Can you imagine what the most popular portal in the country is?

It is compact, but there was a staff of developers.

Sometimes it reached 30 people, and the section "Kuplyu.Tut.by" was developed since 2012.

Hundreds of thousands of lines of code, tens of thousands of comments written by managers and programmers.

There, you don't need a great mind and a programming education to understand that the software was developed by us, that joining the PVT was absolutely legal.

- What do you think the creator of Tut.by Yury Zisser, who has not been with us for almost three years, would say today?

- I think that Yuri would not have survived the debacle, or he would have, if it had not happened earlier, an oncological disease, which would have taken him to the grave by today's sentence.

Probably, he would say if he were alive (in fact, he always said so) that the most important thing in our company is people, and the former shareholders of Tut.by are ready for these people, conditionally speaking, to pledge some more money for that , so that they are free.

- What would you say to Marina and Lyudmila if they could hear you?

- We are very much waiting for you.

We love you very much.

We want this to be over for you as soon as possible.

We are very proud of the way you behave, that you are not broken, that you are smiling, that you have not admitted to the ridiculous accusations against you.

We are grateful to you for the years you worked and became shareholders.

Your mind, your energy, your principles brought a lot of glory to this country, a portal and a lot of benefit to the democratic movement of Belarus.

And one way or another, all this will lead to the victory of democracy in the country.

  • Anna Sous

    Journalist of Radio Svaboda

    Editor of the "Only women" community on Facebook 

    sousa@rferl.org

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