Pozirk ( /pózirk/, Belarusian: Позірк) is a Belarusian independent news agency reporting in Russian, Belarusian and English, founded by former employees of

BelaPAN The Belarusian Private News Agency or shortly BelaPAN () is a non-governmental independent Belarusian news agency, one of the main in the country. BelaPAN provides news on politics, economy, and sports from Belarus in Russian, Belarusian and En ...

and its online newspaper ''Naviny.by''.

History

On October 16, 2023, Pozirk launched the website ''Pozirk.online''. However, on December 5 of the same year, the Central District Court in

Minsk Minsk (, ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the administra ...

declared the website "extremist material". Since February 2024, users in Belarus can only access it through VPN services. On December 19, 2024, the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs designated the whole Pozirk news agency as an extremist group. BelaPAN journalists and editors were forced to flee Belarus as the government banned the country's oldest independent news agency in 2021.

Name

"Pozirk" means "look", "glance" or "gaze" in Belarusian.{{Cite book , last=Ushkevich , first=Alexander , title=Byelorussian-English, English-Byelorussian Dictionary with Complete Phonetics , last2=Zezulin , first2=Alexandra , publisher=Hippocrene Books , year=1992 , location=New York

References

Multilingual news services Belarusian news websites Censorship in Belarus