Association Member
Yuras Ziankovich
“My principle is quite simple: Struggle grounded in law. Truth substantiated by facts.”
Story & Mission in the Association
Belarusian-American attorney, public and political figure, former political prisoner, and International Legal Counsel for the Association of Political Prisoners of Belarus.
Political Persecution & Conviction
A dual US and Belarusian citizen, Yuras served in local government and was active in democratic politics. In April 2021, he was abducted in Moscow by Belarusian security agents and forcibly rendered to the KGB detention center in Minsk.
In September 2022, the Minsk Regional Court sentenced him under Articles 357 and 361-1 to 11 years of high-security imprisonment, subsequently adding 2 more years under maximum-security conditions.
Yuras endured torture, punitive isolation cells, and hunger strikes. On April 30, 2025, following high-level diplomatic intervention by the United States government, he was liberated and safely repatriated to the US.
Public & Human Rights Activism After Release
Following his release, Yuras Ziankovich focuses his work on several interrelated directions: assisting political prisoners and victims of repression, institutional activity in the Coordination Council, international advocacy, legal accountability mechanisms, as well as Belarusian statehood and regional security.
He places paramount importance on the issue of political prisoners and their families. While securing the release of each individual is of the highest humanitarian value, politically it remains insufficient as long as the regime retains the capacity to take new hostages. Consequently, his strategic priority is not only to liberate people, but to steadily raise the cost of repression and dismantle the very mechanism that makes political hostage-taking an effective instrument of power.
Another key dimension of his work is defending Belarusian businesses operating under constant threat of criminal prosecution, asset confiscation, and intimidation of employees and relatives. Yuras emphasizes that people should not be categorized into "clean" and "regime-linked" simply because they continued working in Belarus; instead, it is essential to distinguish deliberate complicity from coercion, and to unite everyone who has suffered under the repressive system.
⚖️ Official Human Rights Center "Viasna" Dossier:
View verified criminal case records on the spring96 database:
prisoners.spring96.org/en/person/jury-zjankovicz