Authorities arrest Belarusian Wikipedia sysop and only bureaucrat Maksim Lepushenka
Monday, May 26, 2025
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On May 17, 2025, Nasha Niva announced that Belarusian security forces had apprehended Maksim Lepushenka, the Belarusian-language Wikipedia sysop, on May 15, 2025. This became the latest link in a chain of detentions of Belarusian Wikipedians in recent months.
Lepushenka was a highly experienced figure in the Belarusian-language Wikipedia: he was a veteran editor, the sole bureaucrat, and had been a sysop since 2007. Despite his academic focus on the ancient history of Belarus, he devoted considerable time to maintaining order and resolving conflicts within the platform.
Following the detention of the sole bureaucrat, the granting of sysop rights in Belarusian Wikipedia became technically impossible.
Meeting in Baranovichi, 2016 (Image: Mr. Zabej)
In early May 2025, the Belarusian authorities detained Olga Sitnik (nickname - Khomelka), an editor and another sysop of the Belarusian Wikipedia. She was given 10 days of administrative arrest and placed in a detention center located in the 1st Okrestina Lane. Authorities had previously detained her on April 17th but later released her. The release date is unknown.
Oleg Yunakov, an active contributor to Belarusian Wikipedia, shared his comments on the events.
Comments from Oleg
editAs can be seen from Okrestina article on Russian Wikipedia:
"Okrestina" has become a household name, and the expression "to end up in Okrestina" means "to be detained" or simply "to end up in prison." The term, named after the detention center, has become a symbol of the torture of peaceful citizens who disagreed with the election fraud and participants in the protests in Belarus (2020-2021).
Minsk resident Olga Sitnik, who dedicates herself to raising her three minor children, is an active participant in the Belarusian Wikipedia. In her free time from family responsibilities, she enriches the section with knowledge in the fields of motherhood, culture, and nature. Her contributions were recognized by the community in 2010 when she became a sysop.
These are far from the first and not the only two instances of repressive actions against members of the Belarusian wiki community.
On March 13, 2025, the editor with the nickname Kazimier Lachnovič (real name unknown) disappeared from the information space. In addition to creating articles, he was an sysop (one of four) and a bureaucrat (a user with the ability to grant sysop rights) of the "Tarashkevitsa" section. There are two language sections in Belarus – one in Belarusian and the other in Tarashkevitsa.
In addition to the disappearance of the sysop with the nickname Kazimier Lachnovič, at the end of 2024, a Wikipedia user with the nickname Stary Jolup, who works in the "Tarashkevitsa" section, was detained (though not formally for editing articles). Under Kazimier Lachnovič's activity, the section stated that the state language of Belarus is Belarusian, the flag is white-red-white, and the coat of arms is Pahonia. Lukashenka, who has controlled power for decades, was described as the "head of the occupation administration."
A week after the user with the nickname Kazimier Lachnovič disappeared, propagandist Lyudmila Hladkaya stated in her material that "Wikipedia is a weapon of mass destruction against post-Soviet countries, and the Belarusian section is edited from Poland." The "Nasha Niva" publication suggests that the arrests of several sysops of the Belarusian-language Wikipedia in a short period appear to be interconnected, especially in conjunction with the start of attacks by propagandists, for which there are no obvious reasons. A commentator with the nickname Mkh noted under the "Nasha Niva" article:
They brought order to the media, and now they've turned to Wikipedia. It seems they've just begun the second part of their plan:
- They expelled all the activists to Poland.
- Now they're shouting that "the entire Belarusian Wikipedia is edited from Poland."
- They want to impose their version of "truth" on the youth. They scolded Grisha for extremism on YouTube, and even GUBOPiK (Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption) wasn't scared; as a result, they just barked at YouTube. Wikipedia has another feature: it stores the IP addresses of anonymous "lawyers" in open access. Just "take and go" from house to house.
It's important to note that after 2022, in the Belarusian Wikipedia, the edit history of political articles, which allowed one to see who made the changes, became hidden at the oversight level. This means that the IP addresses and account names of editors are now inaccessible not only to readers and Wikipedia editors but even to the Belarusian section's sysops.
The tactic of concealment was first tried in the Russian-language section, and then followed in the Belarusian one, where it was raised to the level of auditors. As Radio Liberty wrote on the symbolic date of May 9, 2022, regarding the previous high-profile repressions against Belarusian Wikipedians:
"Any of us could end up in the place of Pavel Pernikov and Mark Bernstein," says Oleg Yunakov. "By default, everyone who edits an article remains in the edit history. And if someone previously mentioned their personal data on Wikipedia, then it's possible to link an edit to a person. We in the Arbitration Committee made an unprecedented decision a couple of months ago: to hide all authors of edits in articles on military topics. They remain authors, but they are not visible to outsiders. Therefore, it will be almost impossible to accuse someone now. The problem is that Mark and Pavel were taken before we implemented this."
As a reminder, Mark Bernstein was detained on March 11, 2022, by Belarusian security forces from GUBOPiK, presumably due to his alleged work on the article about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He was charged on March 26 under Article 342.1 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus (organization or participation in actions grossly violating public order), and on June 24, he received a sentence of 3 years of restriction of freedom. This term expired in January 2025, but Bernstein is still restricted from leaving the country and is required to check in weekly. His arrest caused widespread resonance in the wiki community, and human rights activists recognized Bernstein as a political prisoner.
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Human rights activist and editor of several language versions of Wikipedia, Pavel Pernikov, was sentenced on April 7, 2022, by the court of the Moscow district of Brest, presided over by Judge Yevgeny Bregan, to two years of imprisonment in a general regime colony at the request of prosecutor Yelena Tikhanovich. The basis for the verdict was several edits in articles on the Russian and Belarusian Wikipedias, as well as a publication on the website of the International Society for Human Rights. Belarusian human rights activists recognized Pernikov as a political prisoner.
Sources
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This is a complete or partial translation of the article "«А я сейчас вам покажу, откуда на Википедию готовилось нападение»", from the Russian language Wikinews. |
| This is a complete or partial translation of the article "«А я сейчас вам покажу, откуда на Википедию готовилось нападение»", from the Russian language Wikinews. |
- Задержали администратора белорусской Википедии Максима Лепушенко — Наша Нiва, May 17, 2025 (Russian)
- Администратора белорусской Википедии посадили на сутки — Наша Нiва, May 15, 2025 (Russian)
- "Никто не будет прогибаться под цензуру". "Википедия" во время войны — Radio Liberty, May 9, 2022 (Russian)
- Тарашкевица — Википедия, May 15, 2025 (access date) (Russian)
- Марк Израйлевич Бернштейн, Марк Израйлевич — Википедия, May 15, 2025 (access date) (Russian)
- Павла Перникова Преследование Павла Перникова — Википедия, May 15, 2025 (access date) (Russian)
