Meanwhile, the БелсатТВ app for Android and iOS tablets and smartphones allows viewers to watch live, and read the latest news with embedded videos.
In May 2019, 85% of the Mia Research poll respondents declared that they watch the channel's programmes online, compared to only 18% via satellite dishes, 55% on computers and laptops, and 40% on smartphones.
Compared to earlier years, there was a steep rise in the activity of Internet users on the channel's website, which has five language versions: Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian, English and Polish.
[10][11] Like the website, there are five language versions of all the channel's social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, Odnoklassniki, VKontakte and Linkedin.
The creation of a satellite channel as part of Telewizja Polska, aimed at viewers in Belarus, was the initiative of journalist Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy.
As a result, the project became a priority area for Polish policy governing international cooperation to develop democracy and civil society.
On 20 June 2006 Telewizja Polska's board formed a commission of media professionals from Poland and Belarus to draft plans for a Belarusian-language channel.
On 23 April 2007 Telewizja Polska and the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed an agreement to create a channel named TV Bialorus.
[12] In August 2017, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its then-head Witold Waszczykowski reduced Belsat's subsidy and terminated the agreement to fund the channel.
[13] As a result, Jacek Kurski, the head of TVP, addressed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, requesting confirmation of whether the government intended to continue funding the channel.
In February 2021, two Belsat journalists, Katsyaryna Andreeva and Darya Chultsova, were sentenced to two years in prison by a court in Minsk after reporting from an anti-government rally held in November 2020.
From the outset, the channel has been co-funded by a range of institutions, including the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Nordic Council of Ministers, the foreign ministries of Norway, the Netherlands, Canada and Lithuania, the British and Irish governments, and the US State Department.
The channel has two registered branch offices in Minsk and Kyiv, as well as a network of correspondents in Berlin, Brussels, Vilnius, Prague and Yerevan.
[16] The Belarusian authorities’ subsequent actions confirmed the political trend set by Lukashenko, resulting in four official refusals to register Belsat in Belarus.
The most recent search of Belsat's Minsk offices was carried out in 2019, in connection with a case in which the channel's journalists had allegedly slandered Andrey Shved, chairman of the State Forensic Examination Committee.
On 18 February 2021 Belsat TV journalist Katsyaryna Andreeva and camerawoman Darya Chultsova were sentenced to two years of imprisonment in a minimum-security penal colony.
The investigators claim the Belsat crew ‘coordinated protesters and called for further actions’, but the two media workers were just performing their professional duties by reporting from the scene.
[21] In the fall of 2022, a criminal case for an interview with the channel was opened against Natalya Suslova, the mother of Belarusian volunteer Pavel “Volat” Suslov, who was killed in action in Ukraine.
MEPs called on the European Commission “to support, with all financial and political means, the efforts of Belarusian civil society […] and non-governmental organisations in Belarus to promote democracy and oppose the regime”.
In May 2019, Harlem Désir, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, expressed his disappointment and concern regarding the ongoing practice of imposing penalties on journalists working without accreditation in Belarus.
Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy and her staff were awarded Rzeczpospolita’s Jerzy Giedroyc prize for promoting good relations with neighbouring countries.