A court in Belarus has sentenced Dmitry and Tatyana Korsakov to 14 and 12 years’ imprisonment respectively on charges of treason and illegal arms trafficking; while their daughter Pelageya Korsakova was sentenced in absentia to 11 years’ imprisonment. Pelageya told the publication “Solidarnast” about this.
According to her, her parents were detained in September 2025. After that, her father called her and told her that her mother had been hospitalised with a stroke, and asked her to return home.
“After that, someone who didn’t introduce themselves took the phone and continued: ‘Your parents have been detained; if you want us to release them, you must come here,’” she said. “I learnt that they had been taken away—not even taken away, but simply abducted from their home—when my mother returned from work. They carried out a search, rummaged through everything, confiscated electronic devices, and took the memory sticks from the camera installed in the flat.”
Tatyana Korsakova worked as a nursery teacher and a mentor for children with autism, whilst Dmitry Korsakov was a worker at the same nursery.
Pelageya Korsakova herself left Belarus for Ukraine in 2021 due to fears of persecution following her participation in protests. In Ukraine, she coordinates rapid-response volunteers who travel to the sites of attacks and assist the injured.
She considers the charges brought against her and her parents to be “utterly absurd”. “What weapons, what treason against the state! Our only ‘crime’ is that I am in Ukraine, and we kept in touch, phoning each other. And my parents were worried about me. On that basis, it seems the authorities have let their imaginations run wild,” she said.