Protests
‘I went to prison while he played video games’: Sofia Sapega, arrested alongside journalist Roman Protasevich after Belarus forced their Ryanair flight to land in Minsk, tells her side of the story
On May 23, 2021, Belarusian security services tricked a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius into landing in Minsk. On board were Roman Protasevich (Raman Pratasevich) and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Protasevich had been the former editor-in-chief of the popular Telegram channel Nexta, which coordinated the 2020 protests in Belarus. Sapega administered the Telegram channel “Black Book of Belarus,” which published the personal data of security officials involved in violence against protesters. The couple was detained. Both cooperated with investigators, and both managed to avoid the lengthy