September 8, Pozirk. Belarusian journalist and prominent Polish minority activist Andrej Pačobut (Andrzej Poczobut) temporarily returned to Belarus on September 8, reported Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza.
Pačobut crossed the Polish-Belarusian border and headed to Hrodna, Gazeta Wyborcza said, adding that the trip would last one week.
According to the report, Pačobut earlier said that he would like to visit “different places” in Hrodna. He noted that many people had been helping him while he was in a detention center, sending him food parcels, although such support came to an end when he was placed in punitive confinement in a penal colony. “I’m very grateful for the aid, it helped me survive,” he said.
Several days ago, Pačobut had a meeting with Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican, announcing afterward that he had asked for the pontiff’s blessing and would soon return to Belarus.
In an interview published by Polish news agency PAP on September 2, the former political prisoner, who was released and deported to Poland at the end of April, said that he had asked for a papal blessing for Belarus, for his family and for the Union of Poles in Belarus during a brief conversation following the general audience at the Vatican.
Pačobut said that he felt “an inner calm” after the meeting.
On September 1, Polish Deputy Interior Minister Czesław Mroczek warned that Pačobut would face a huge risk should he return to Belarus.
His comment came a few days after Pačobut vowed to go back to Belarus despite the risk of politically-motivated persecution. Earlier Pačobut said that he would return no later than September.
Andrej Pačobut, known as a contributor to Gazeta Wyborcza, was arrested in March 2021 on what was widely believed trumped-up charges. In February 2023, Judge Dźmitryj Bubienčyk of the Hrodna Regional Court sentenced him to eight years in prison after finding him guilty of inciting hatred and calling for sanctions. Human rights defenders recognized him as a political prisoner.
Belarusian authorities freed Pačobut on April 28 and deported him to Poland. The release came after John Coale, the US special envoy for Belarus, met with Polish President Karol Nawrocki and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski in Warsaw on April 27.
On May 3, Nawrocki presented Pačobut with Poland’s highest state award, the Order of the White Eagle. In 2025, the European Parliament granted him the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
