Belarus sentences 66-year-old Catholic priest to three years for opposing Ukraine war

A Belarusian court has sentenced a Catholic priest to three years in prison for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. Father Anatoly Parakhnevich, 66, is the pastor in Alkovichy, a village in northwestern Belarus. The Vilejka district court in the Minsk region also imposed a fine. The charges were "insult to the authorities" and "extremist activity." The trial was held behind closed doors in October, and the sentence was made public on November 5.

According to the Viasna Human Rights Center, the case stems from the priest's public opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and his call for Belarus to repent for its complicity in the conflict. Masked men identified as agents of the Belarusian security services arrested Parakhnevich in March. He has been held in pretrial detention since then, and local sources say he suffered a heart attack during that time. Parakhnevich denies all the charges and has said he intends to appeal to higher courts.

Viasna, the country's leading human rights organization, has designated Parakhnevich a political prisoner. The pastor had spoken openly against the war in Ukraine, condemned Belarus's involvement in it and helped organize aid collections for Ukrainian refugees. In one homily he put a question directly to his parishioners: "Will our own conscience ever be able to forgive us?"

Pavel Sapelka, a lawyer with Viasna, warned that "the authorities aggressively persecute, threaten and intimidate those who shape public opinion inside the country." He said Parakhnevich was "a very popular priest whose sermons were heard by thousands of Belarusians." Sapelka added that "the trial of the cleric took place in the context of prolonged, large-scale pressure exerted by the authorities on all religious communities." Viasna currently counts 884 people jailed in Belarus for political reasons.

Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called the sentence "heartbreaking" and "politically motivated." "The repression continues and the authorities keep filling the spaces in the prisons with new political prisoners," she told the Associated Press.

The sentence against Parakhnevich follows a pattern of systematic repression of the clergy that intensified after the 2020 presidential election, widely regarded as fraudulent. Tens of thousands of citizens took to the streets at the time, and the government responded with mass arrests and police violence. Since then, many clergy from different denominations, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, have been jailed, silenced or pushed into exile, particularly those who backed the protests or opened their churches to demonstrators. Catholics make up slightly under 14 percent of the Belarusian population, compared with 80 percent Orthodox Christians and 2 percent Protestants.

The legal framework governing religious communities has become even more restrictive since President Alexander Lukashenko signed a new law requiring all congregations to go through a re-registration process. The law bars the use of civic symbols during worship and prevents anyone on lists of "extremists" from leading a parish. Lukashenko has ruled the country of 9.5 million people with an iron fist for more than three decades. Belarus has faced successive Western sanctions both for the crackdown at home and for allowing Russia to use its territory to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

There have also been moves in the other direction. In November 2025, Lukashenko's government pardoned two Catholic priests after the Vatican interceded directly. The sentence against Parakhnevich comes a few weeks after Pope Leo XIV appointed Liavoncij Tumouski apostolic administrator for Byzantine-rite Catholics in the country.