Russian journalist receives 3-year sentence in Belarus.

A Belarusian court has sentenced a reporter for the now-closed local edition of Komsomolskaya Pravda to three years in prison for insulting the country's authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko. Hienadz Mazheyka was sentenced for a 2021 article that cited an acquaintance of a man killed in a police raid as speaking favorably of him. The Belarusian Association of Journalists says there are 36 journalists either imprisoned or in detention awaiting trial, and the situation with free speech in Belarus is the worst in Europe.