Zerkalo keeps millions of Belarusians informed when silence is the state's strategy.
Last summer at 4 am, a Zerkalo reader sent in a photo. Later they sent video footage from a surveillance camera. A Russian drone had crashed in a parking lot in a heavily populated area of central Minsk, narrowly missing a residential building.
The Zerkalo team opened their monitoring systems that morning at 6 am and verified the information. They called the security services who would not answer their call. After that, they published the news. An hour later, but only after Zerkalo went public, the authorities admitted what had happened.
Zerkalo, meaning “mirror”, covers the everyday issues of people inside Belarus. These are often stories that would never be published in a country where state-controlled media dominate, independent media websites are blocked, and journalists face broad repression.
The Mirror That Stayed
The Zerkalo team are Belarusians in exile who work from Vilnius, Warsaw and other European cities, but their entire reason for existing is inside Belarus. The media is a vital source of information for millions inside the country.
The team have moved twice, from Belarus to Ukraine, when Zerkalo’s predecessor Tut.by one of Belarus’s most popular news outlets, was declared extremist by the Lukashenka regime. More than 10 Tut.by employees were arrested, including the CEO and editor-in-chief, as the authorities implemented systematic and severe repression against journalists that saw hundreds of journalists detained. They were sentenced to 12 years in prison. Liudmila Chekina, Zerkalo’s CEO, remains behind bars to this day.
Zerkalo was created to preserve this legacy when it was launched in Ukraine in 2021. Then following the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, the team moved again.
Zerkalo’s biggest success is maintaining its audience inside Belarus throughout the past five years. They have 27 million views on their website per month, and they constantly diversify content across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Today 2.2 million unique visitors come to Zerkalo’s website every month to read their stories, 55 percent of them from inside Belarus. Eighty percent of their TikTok audience are inside the country, and most of these readers are under 30.
Covering stories from inside Belarus
“If we only wrote about Belarus from the perspective of Poland or Germany, we'd be irrelevant,” a team member says. Instead, they cover public transport problems in Minsk. wage theft, sick children needing fundraising, bureaucratic cruelty.
They monitor the nuclear power plant built by Russians without any public consultation, a particularly sensitive subject in a country that bore the brunt of radioactive exposure after the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986.
Recently, a family member of a nuclear power plant worker reached out to them and told them that the second reactor was not functioning, and the power plant was shut off, a dangerous situation as it needed to be maintained. The government had kept silent on this situation, and the worker was afraid he was being followed. The team verified the information and published the content. Four hours later, the government confirmed what Zerkalo had reported.
In another case, workers from the Opera and Ballet Theatre contacted them and related that they were being forced to perform in occupied Crimea. Zerkalo verified the story and published it. A month later, the trip was cancelled. Sources told them it was because of the public response their story generated.
The Zerkalo journalists related that on one occasion, they contacted a state newspaper, posing as concerned citizens, and asking why they hadn’t covered the story of a drone that fell near a school. Their response was revelatory. “Nobody gave us official information... Until we have official information, we can't publish,” the state media said.
This simple answer sums up why Zerkalo matters inside Belarus, as without them and other independent Belarusian media, there is no one to tell these stories. The state newspapers wait for permission, and the population waits for someone to notice.
Diversifying platforms for audiences
Zerkalo’s team admit that a big reason for their success is that they are obsessive about data. “We constantly look at what people consume, what topics interest them, where they watch the news, who they are, and how old they are, what’s their gender, where do they live, what city they live in in Belarus or if they are based abroad. Based on this data we constantly adapt our editorial policy," they say.
They are focused on providing news in the formats their audience prefer. For instance, their YouTube long-form interviews attract viewers in the older category, most of them 50 and older. As young people don’t read long articles, they repackage this material for TikTok as 12 to 20 second short-films and they also publish YouTube shorts. On Instagram, they have carousel formats with short videos.
When Belarusian political prisoners were released in December 2025, Zerkalo's coverage was viewed 9 million times across their platforms. About 80 percent of those views came from inside Belarus.
People who won’t be silent
Zerkalo’s journalists are working in one of the most repressive contexts in the world. Any contact with Zerkalo from inside Belarus is a criminal offence, and it carries the risk of seven to ten years imprisonment. And yet people inside the country continue to reach out. Every day Zerkalo publishes material based on information the audience shares.
They explain that they’ve never had a leak that exposed their sources. As the team put, it “trust is everything”.
They have developed a workaround when it is too risky for people to contact them directly with information. They ask them to post their stories on their own social media first.
“Maybe someone makes a video on TikTok or they post something on Instagram. We can then use this. This is a way to cover the problems of ordinary small people," they say.
They do everything to protect their sources. “We often get requests to delete content. If it's not a public figure, we always do it. We understand that we're safe here in Vilnius, in Warsaw. But our readers are not,” they say.
Financial challenges
Zerkalo suffers from the same challenges as all Belarusian independent media, particularly when it comes to funding.
“We cannot be self-sufficient,” a team member admits. “We're trying to become more commercial, with banner advertisements, but our audience is in Belarus, and our advertisers have to be outside the country. Our content is not relevant to Lithuanian or Polish businesses."
They rely on donors to continue operating, but last year’s loss of US foreign funding hit them badly, as they lost 20 percent of their budget. EED provides Zerkalo with key institutional support.
Today, Zerkalo’s team continues to chase stories in a country they can't enter, serving an audience that risks prison time just for reading them. They are a mirror that keeps reflecting the truths at home.
This article reflects the views of the grantees featured and does not necessarily represent the official opinion of EED.
