"When introducing myself, I said: 'Maryna'." Conversation with the former editor-in-chief of Tut.by, political prisoner and seamstress of the Homel colony

"Maryna" — that's how Zolatava introduced herself in the colony. And, she says, she never emphasized that she used to be the editor-in-chief of Tut.by. A year ago, she enthusiastically worked as a seamstress in the Homel colony, mending her pink dresses and unable to buy a new one, and now she exchanges "circles" with her children, roller skates, and learns Polish.

Maryna arrives for the interview a few minutes before the agreed time. She climbs the stairs to the fourth floor, even though there's an elevator.

"I remember Maryna always saying to walk," a colleague nearby recalls the times before her imprisonment.

Graceful, in a sporty style, with her usual short blonde hairstyle. She asks, if possible, to be addressed as "Maryna," without "Ms." She warns that she might lack words in Belarusian for a long interview, but she never switches to Russian.

In her answers, she sometimes delves into the topic of imprisonment and political prisoners, even when the question was not directly related to it. Again and again, she lists the names of her female acquaintances who remain behind bars: "Irachka," "Anechka," "my Liudmila." And she laughs at the assumption: no, she doesn't constantly talk about prison every day.

At the end of the conversation, Maryna looks at sunflowers and says she loves such flowers.

"My husband says I have a sunflower in my eye. Do you see?" she shows her eye with a reddish core and light eyelashes.

Warsaw

For more than four months, Maryna Zolatava has been living in Warsaw. She was released from the colony in Homel last year on December 13 and immediately sent to Ukraine without a passport; a few days later, she arrived in Poland.

"I like it very much," she says about her new city and country of residence.

She calls her current conditions "light regime," because, unlike many other released people, Maryna came to her family, who had moved abroad earlier.

"This immediately changes the level of comfort," Zolatava notes.

Павялічыць

She says she used to visit Poland since her student days.

"I always think that Belarus could have gone the same way. Poland looks like what Belarus could have been," she believes.

What Zolatava primarily likes about Poland is freedom: when a person can do what they want, realize their ideas not only for their own benefit but also for the benefit of society. She likes that Belarusians in Warsaw are actively opening their businesses and "showing their best side."

Maryna started learning Polish 25 years ago, at the university, majoring in Slavic philology: Bulgarian perfectly, and Polish a little.

"I really like the Polish language. I like how it sounds, the phonetics. I really like the Poles' approach to word formation. It seems to me that this reflects the character of the nation: when they say not 'football,' but 'piłka nożna.' International words are used in all languages, but Poles invent something of their own," the interviewee reflects.

Maryna recently took a Polish language exam. She will only find out the results in a few months. She believes that there are no particular problems with listening, reading, and grammar, but speaking and writing were quite difficult. She regrets that she cannot actively use Polish, as there is a lot of Russian everywhere in Poland now.

Concert, Rollerblading, Driving

"Gradually, step by step, I am recovering as a person. In prison, I thought: when I get out, I'll manage to do all the important things in one day. But it doesn't work out that way," Maryna laughs.

The last four months have been mostly joyful for her, Zolatava says: she is free, loved ones are near, she can choose what to do, and "sometimes people get out." She was very pleased that women who were imprisoned for sending parcels to political prisoners were recently released, and that they were allowed to stay in Belarus.

Павялічыць

Before her Polish exam, Maryna went to an Irdorath concert. She and Nadzeya Kalach, the band's vocalist, were in the same cell in Valadarka, the interviewee says. Almost every evening Nadzeya sang her songs there.

"It was a very inspiring event. When she started singing songs at the concert that I had heard in the cell, I just couldn't hold back," Maryna recounts.

In Warsaw, she walks a lot. She loves to visit parks and the Vistula embankment. The latter is convenient for rollerblading - just like she used to on the roller ski track in Viashnyanka in Minsk. Maryna's rollerblades have already been brought from Belarus.

"I love Minsk very much, I miss it terribly. It's my hometown and... — she says and pauses for a long time. — I was born there and I know all the districts, I can give tours. There's a word that appeared, I guess, while I was in prison — 'vibe.' So there's a general vibe between Warsaw and Minsk. Although I don't imagine what Minsk is like now. I was last there in May 2021."

She adds that she hopes to visit Minsk and other places in Belarus someday, as she had only just started traveling around the country before prison. Soon she plans to regain her driving skills in Poland.

Family

Night photos from Warsaw in December, where four people hugged like football players before a match, circulated online. This is how the meeting of Maryna Zolatava, her husband Vasil, daughter Nadzeya, and son Fyodar looked after more than four years of separation.

Павялічыць

Maryna Zolatava after her release and transfer to Ukraine. December 13, 2025

"Besides hugging your loved ones, pressing close, feeling that energy, warmth, smell, you have no other desires that could displace it. This one desire overrides everything else. When the bus arrived in Warsaw, it was impossible not to notice the children: Nadzeya was in a red coat, and Fedzia in red trousers, and even on crutches. I caught sight of them, and saw nothing else," she recalls.

She says she still hasn't had enough hugs with her relatives — every moment should be used for them.

"The most terrible loss is the loss of time," Maryna notes. "Four and a half years away from my family. I didn't see how my children grew up, how their lives changed, I didn't see my husband, I couldn't hug my mother. I regret that the most."

She believes that even from behind bars, she managed to maintain contact and be present in her family, as her relatives often wrote her letters, and they arrived.

Павялічыць

"Although the children became more adult and independent. It happened imperceptibly," she notes.

The mother adds that she probably still hasn't learned everything that happened in her children's lives while she was behind bars. "It's impossible to tell everything at once."

"If something pleasant happened in the lives of my children or husband, of course, they wrote to me about it. I knew that my husband runs half-marathons and marathons, that my daughter got into university, passed exams in Polish and English," Maryna says.

Her daughter is currently studying English and Spanish philology at the University of Warsaw. Her son is preparing to take his final exams and apply to university this year, but where — perhaps even he doesn't know for sure, his mother notes.

Their children live together in Warsaw, but separately from their parents, Maryna says. In recent weeks, they've seen less of each other, as Maryna and her husband were preparing for the Polish language exam, and the children were also busy with their studies.

"Of course, we are always in touch, exchanging 'circles' on Telegram. Yesterday, the children sent a photo of them eating draniki together, which their son had cooked. It was very touching. When children live together and care for each other, cook for each other, it's very cool," the mother shares.

Павялічыць

Liudmila Chekina and Maryna Zolatava in court.

The last time they met, they invented "pirozhki" — short poems.

"I still have some of the letters I received in the pre-trial detention center. There were letters from my cousin, in which he sent funny 'pirozhki.' I read them to the children. They liked it very much. We decided to sit down and compose our own. It was cool," Maryna recalls.

Maryna's mother and brother remained in Belarus. Her mother has already visited her daughter twice. They traveled to Gdańsk together, visiting the "Solidarity" museum.

"At the exit, there's an installation with portraits of Belarusian political prisoners. It's very touching to see many familiar faces there who were already free at that moment. My mom and I were there when Katya Andreeva, Marfa Rabkova, Nasta Loika had already been released. The 'Solidarity' Museum is more a story about the path to freedom. In this place, you first better understand Polish history, and second, you see many parallels with events in our country," Maryna says.

Women

The first time Maryna cried in detention, she recounts, was when she saw a woman in the colony who had previously sent her parcels.

"It's very bitter that for parcels, for an act of kindness, for wanting to help another person, one is put in prison. On the other hand, I was very pleased to get to know this person later," she shares.

Павялічыць

This political prisoner is already free. There were several such women with whom Maryna had corresponded and then met behind bars.

Zolatava says that she periodically returns to her thoughts about prison, recalling the imprisoned women. She thought about her female colleagues especially often in winter, because "this winter, of all the colony winters, seemed to be the hardest": very cold and a lot of snow.

She mentions some names of women who find it especially difficult in the colony: 70-year-old Iryna Melkher, who is in very poor health and has a 17-year sentence, Iryna Takarchuk and Hanna Strazhevich — pensioners imprisoned for sending parcels to political prisoners.

"I worry very much for Anechka Ablab. She has three sons and only one of them is an adult. She has been in prison for 4.5 years already, and has a total of 11. I worry very much for Yana Pinchuk. So many people. Today you remember one, tomorrow another. I understand that many more men are imprisoned, but the situation with women is more familiar to me, so I talk about them. I worry very much for Volha Brytsikava, for Nastsia Lazarenka, the lawyer. Irachka Zlobina — a person has been imprisoned for more than five years, and it's completely unclear why," the former political prisoner shares.

At least half of the women currently in the colony, not only for political reasons, in her opinion, should not be there. Zolatava regretfully notes that not all interlocutors want to listen to her stories about prison. She thinks about documenting her experience behind bars, possibly writing a book about it.

Former Editor-in-Chief

On the day Maryna Zolatava was taken to Ukraine, volunteers from the "I Want to Live" movement recorded a short video with her.

"My name is Maryna Zolatava. I was the editor-in-chief of the Tut.by portal," she introduces herself there.

To the question of whether it's easy for her to say "former editor-in-chief," the interviewee falls silent for a long time.

"It's quite a painful question. Tut.by existed for just under 21 years, but I hope that Tut.by will still be in Belarus, in the history of Belarus, that it is such a phenomenon that cannot be erased, cannot be removed, cannot be forgotten, because Tut.by greatly influenced us. It's a very important part of my life and, it seems to me, of society. That's why Liudmila (Liudmila Chekina — former director of Tut.by — PC) and I received such huge sentences. I hope it's too early to put a full stop," says the former editor-in-chief of the portal.

Павялічыць

In the colony, Maryna says, she never emphasized that she was the editor of Tut.by, that she worked in media. When introducing herself, she said: "Maryna."

"Why would I? You establish connections with the person who will be directly interacting with you, not with your past background. So it's important to fix the current state of affairs, not what was once. Of course, many recognized me. But it was important for me that they saw Maryna Zolatava in me, not the editor of Tut.by," she says.

To the question: who is Maryna Zolatava, she answers "a person," to the clarification "and what else?" — "I think that's enough," she smiles.

"Respect yourself and others. Don't put yourself above, don't put yourself below. Understand that there are people next to you. They are all different, maybe you don't like someone. Maybe someone doesn't like you. But you live together in this territory, and you need to interact," she shares her vision of how to remain human behind bars.

Maryna thinks that she largely managed to maintain this balance in relationships, so she had no conflicts with other convicts.

Journalism

Zolatava has not yet decided whether she will return to journalism. But she notes that among Belarusian media, she likes what "Lustra" (Mirror) does, "the way they selflessly work, very worthily." At the same time, she is not very closely following events or media life now.

"But I see that the conditions for media functioning have changed a lot. What worries me most is that media aimed at covering the situation in Belarus cannot exist under normal conditions. They are outlawed, cannot normally receive information, cover events in Belarus, write reports — there is none of what we used to perceive as normal journalistic work. I don't know how one can work under such conditions. But I look at colleagues — and somehow it works out," Zolatava reflects.

Павялічыць

She does not want to return to a kind of journalism where, for example, the real name of the article's author cannot be mentioned.

"Journalism is almost first and foremost about names. And here, names cannot be mentioned. Or when you can't do basic things on the spot — that used to seem impossible," she comments.

Seamstress

"Zolatava is an excellent seamstress," another ex-political prisoner, Larysa Shchyrakova, said about Maryna when she was still behind bars. Zolatava herself is surprised to hear such an opinion. The most difficult thing for her was threading a needle, as her eyesight was poor and had worsened during her imprisonment. However, she notes, she had no resistance to this work. It was not the hardest of all her jobs in life. Sometimes she even enjoyed sewing.

"When the whole factory was sewing uniforms, and our brigade was sewing bed linen. We had linen with cats and an inscription in English: 'This kitty won't mind if you lie on the very edge of this bed.' It was cute. At least at that moment, I wasn't suffering," she smiles.

Her brigade, according to the interviewee, mostly sewed uniforms for the construction company "MAPID", for the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and also for internal Belarusian troops. Maryna had no moral hesitation whether to sew this uniform. "I don't know what the problem is here. You're already in prison anyway," she says.

"It was really cool to see on TV: 'Oh-oh, our jacket!'" the interviewee laughs, speaking about the rescuers' uniform.

Павялічыць

Maryna at her workplace in the TUT.BY editorial office. Archive photo

She notes that she even felt a certain enthusiasm to sew well, as it happens with a new task that needs to be solved.

The problem with this work, the former political prisoner points out, for her was not what exactly had to be done, but that it had to be done against her own will.

Maryna is still deciding what she will do next. Moreover, she currently does not have a work permit in Poland.

"I don't have a definite answer to the question of what I will do tomorrow or when I grow up yet," she smiles.

Colony

"Shouting — that's what surprised me most in the colony at first, because there was none of that in the pre-trial detention center. Convicts got used to communicating with each other that way, because, apparently, it was accepted in their lives, it was normal for them, they probably hadn't learned otherwise. You get used to it and understand that for them it's a way of transmitting information, that they don't put anger into this shouting. Shouting really stresses me out," she says.

To rest from such a burden in the form of shouting, Maryna went out to breathe air, to walk around the territory.

The most unpleasant thing about imprisonment, Zolatava calls coercion.

"You don't decide what you do, what you wear today, what you eat, what you read. You have to walk in rows of five people, you can't go anywhere by yourself. You have to do the work you have to do, not the one you want. This uniformity. There were many moments when it seemed to you that there was no sense in what you were doing. Inventory work, when you have to drag a bucket of sand somewhere, and then your colleague drags it back, or the same with snow," the former political prisoner recounts.

Zolatava says that, like everyone else, she wore the colony uniform: a pink dress and a headscarf, and during the "padded jacket season" from October to May, a padded jacket.

"You can only be in the local yard without a headscarf. Otherwise, you must wear it. I didn't like my reflection in the mirror very much. In the colony, there were ten different ways to tie a headscarf so that it was, if not beautiful, then at least original. It was unpleasant to drag all that on myself. On the day you put on the padded jacket and realize that it will be like this for another seven months, your mood plunges very rapidly," she recounts.

Maryna had two dresses, and "they were a problem." They had to be patched.

Павялічыць

"Finally, on one dress, there was another patch on top of a patch. It's hard to imagine that in the 21st century you can wear such clothes with patched sleeves," she says.

She wrote a request for a new dress last spring, but it was not issued to the political prisoner before her release in December. A new dress could also be bought for 40 rubles. This was Zolatava's monthly salary at the factory. She earned from 25 to a little over 50 rubles a month.

"I couldn't spend all my earnings on a dress, because then I wouldn't have bought kefir or something," she says.

Zolatava was forbidden monetary transfers from outside as a person on the "terrorist list." She survived thanks to food parcels from relatives and her earnings at the factory.

"The only thing I did buy was a headscarf," she laughs.

She says that understanding she had done nothing to be ashamed of and daily physical exercise helped her endure her time in the colony.

"When you wake up in the morning, do your hygiene, make your bed, run outside and start breathing, the first breaths of fresh air are very precious. Just three to five minutes to stretch your body — that's what gives you strength for the day. If you don't do that, you'll have problems today. Although it seems like a trifle," Maryna recounts.

Maryna Zolatava shared how she reevaluated her values during her imprisonment:

It's worth spending as much time as possible with family.

It's worth spending as much time as possible outdoors, looking at trees, the sky, the sun, because that is life.

There's no point in striving to earn all the money in this world.

There's no point in worrying about events you can't influence.

If reality doesn't quite satisfy you, you need to learn to take it calmly, not to worry about it every minute.

It's better to make at least the world around you better.

***

Maryna Zolatava is 48 years old. Born and lived in Minsk. She worked as the editor-in-chief of the largest Belarusian independent portal Tut.by since 2004.

On May 18, 2021, Zolatava and several Tut.by employees were detained by security forces, and the editorial office was ransacked, equipment confiscated. Zolatava, along with the portal's general director Liudmila Chekina, was sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony allegedly for "tax evasion," "inciting hatred," and "calls for actions threatening Belarus's national security." Chekina is the only one of the "tutbaevtsy" who still remains behind bars.

Maryna Zolatava spent more than 4.5 years in detention. On December 13, 2025, she was released from the Homel colony and taken with a large group of political prisoners to Ukraine, and from there to Poland.

Maryna Zolatava had previously faced persecution as the editor-in-chief of Tut.by in the "BelTA case" in 2018-2019. At that time, she was fined $3,600 for "unauthorized reading of the paid news feed of the state news agency BelTA."

Zolatava ran two half-marathons, swam, rollerblades, knows Bulgarian well, and loves to sing Macedonian songs.

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