TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — An imprisoned opposition activist in Belarus resurfaced Wednesday in a video shot by a pro-government blogger after over 700 days of no contact with his family, weeks before an election that is all but certain keep the country's strongman leader in power.
Viktar Babaryka, 61, has been denied meetings with his family and lawyers while serving a 14-year sentence in a penal colony after failing to get on the ballot against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in a 2020 election.
Babaryka was last heard from in February 2023, and other prisoners said later that year he was hospitalized with signs of beatings. Since then, authorities haven’t released any information about his condition and barred his lawyer from visits. The European Parliament has urged authorities to release him and other political prisoners.
Raman Pratasevich, a former opposition journalist who later became a government supporter after being arrested himself, posted photos and a brief video in which Babaryka greeted his family.
It wasn't clear when or under what conditions the images were taken, and The Associated Press could not independently verify them.
Babaryka, who looked visibly thinner than in his last appearance, was pictured wearing a prison uniform bearing a yellow tag designating him as a political prisoner and thus subjecting him to particularly harsh prison conditions.
Pavel Sapelka, a representative of the Viasna Human Rights Center, noted that the images were released ahead of the Jan. 26 presidential election, in which Lukashenko is seeking a seventh, five-year term to add to his more than three decades in power.
“The authorities decided to show Babaryka in the run-up to the election to avoid accusations of forced disappearance of opposition activists behind bars,” Sapelka said. “The terribly emaciated Babaryka epitomizes the nightmare of repressions in Belarus, a sad reminder for others who dare to challenge Lukashenko.”
In November, Pratasevich posted photos of Maria Kolesnikova, another prominent opposition activist who had been held for more than 20 months without any communication with relatives or friends.
Babaryka is one of 1,258 political prisoners in Belarus, according to Viasna, the country's leading human rights group. Top opposition figures were imprisoned or fled the country amid the sweeping crackdown that followed the 2020 election. Authorities responded to massive demonstrations protesting vote-rigging with brutal repressions in which about 65,000 people were arrested and thousands were brutally beaten by police.
At least seven political prisoners have died in custody, according to Viasna.
Like Babaryka, many other opposition activists have been held incommunicado.
Lukashenko pardoned some political prisoners last year but authorities launched a new wave of arrests before the election, seeking to uproot any sign of dissent.
Opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was forced to leave the country after challenging Lukashenko in the 2020 vote, said she was happy to see Babaryka alive and demanded that authorities release information about others who have been held incommunicado, including her husband, activist Siarhei Tsikhanouski.
“We must now demand to see all others who have been held in complete isolation, and the cruel and inhumane incommunicado practice must stop,” she said.
Pratasevich ran a Telegram messaging app channel widely used by participants in the 2020 protests. He was living in exile when he was arrested in 2021 after being pulled off a Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania that was diverted to Minsk by a bomb threat. Once in custody, he made several confessional appearances on state television that critics claimed were made under duress. He was later released and pardoned.
“We consider Pratasevich a hostage. He’s doing all what is ordered by the Belarusian authorities,” Sapelka said.
FILE - People carrying an old Belarusian national flag ,that has become an anti-government symbol, march in an opposition rally to protest the presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus, on Oct. 18, 2020. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - People walk past informational posters supporting Viktar Babaryka, who wanted to run in the upcoming presidential elections, in Minsk, Belarus, on June 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File)
FILE - Viktar Babaryka, a former presidential hopeful, makes a heart gesture while sitting in a defendants’ cage during his trial in Minsk, Belarus, on Feb. 17, 2021. (Oksana Manchuk/BelTA Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - Viktar Babaryka, a former presidential hopeful, stands inside a defendants’ cage during his trial in Minsk, Belarus, on July 6, 2021. (Ramil Nasibulin/BelTA Pool Photo via AP, File)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A privately owned lunar lander touched down on the moon with a drill, drone and rovers for NASA and other customers Thursday, but quickly ran into trouble and may have fallen over.
Intuitive Machines said it was uncertain whether its Athena lander was upright near the moon’s south pole — standing 15 feet (4.7 meters) tall — or lying sideways like its first spacecraft from a year ago. Controllers rushed to turn off some of the lander’s equipment to conserve power while trying to determine what went wrong.
It was the second moon landing this week by a Texas company under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program. Sunday’s touchdown was a complete success.
The company's newest Athena lander dropped out of lunar orbit as planned. The hourlong descent appeared to go well until the final approach when the laser navigation system began acting up. It took a while for Mission Control to confirm touchdown.
“We're on the surface,” reported mission director and co-founder Tim Crain. A few minutes later, he repeated, "It looks like we're down ... We are working to evaluate exactly what our orientation is on the surface.”
Hours after the landing, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus there was conflicting data about how Athena landed and whether it was on its side. The lander was near the intended target site, but a sweep by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in the coming days will confirm its position and orientation, he said.
Launched last week, Athena was communicating with controllers more than 230,000 miles (375,000 kilometers) away and generating solar power, officials said. Mission managers worked to salvage the mission to see whether the drill can be turned on and the drone can be deployed to hop into a crater.
“Obviously, without knowing the exact orientation of the lander, it’s hard to say exactly what science we will and will not be able to do," said NASA's top science officer Nicky Fox.
Intuitive Machines last year put the U.S. back on the moon despite its lander tipping on its side. Last weekend, it was joined by another Texas company's lander.
Firefly Aerospace on Sunday became the first to achieve complete success with its Blue Ghost lunar lander, on the northeastern edge of the near side of the moon. A vacuum already has collected lunar dirt for analysis and a dust shield has shaken off the abrasive particles that cling to everything.
Intuitive Machines was aiming this time for a mountain plateau just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole, much closer than before. It reached the plateau, but Intuitive Machines was not sure how near it was to the precise targeted spot.
This week's back-to-back moon landings are part of NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program meant to get the space agency’s experiments to the gray, dusty surface and jumpstart business. The commercial landers are also seen as scouts for the astronauts who will follow later this decade under NASA's Artemis program, the successor to Apollo.
NASA officials said before the landing that they knew going in that some of the low-cost missions would fail. But with more private missions to the moon, that increased the number of experiments getting there.
NASA spent tens of millions of dollars on the ice drill and two other instruments riding on Athena, and paid an additional $62 million for the lift. Most of the experiments were from private companies, including the two rovers. The rocket-powered drone came from Intuitive Machines — it's meant to hop into a permanently shadowed crater near the landing site in search of frozen water.
To lower costs even more, Intuitive Machines shared its SpaceX rocket launch with three spacecraft that went their separate ways. Two of them — NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer and AstroForge’s asteroid-chasing Odin — are in jeopardy.
NASA said this week that Lunar Trailblazer is spinning without radio contact and won’t reach its intended orbit around the moon for science observations. Odin is also silent, with its planned asteroid flyby unlikely.
As for Athena, Intuitive Machines made dozens of repairs and upgrades following the company’s sideways touchdown by its first lander. It still managed to operate briefly, ending America’s moon-landing drought of more than 50 years.
Until then, the U.S. had not landed on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. No one else has sent astronauts to the moon, the overriding goal of NASA’s Artemis program. And only four other countries have successfully landed robotic spacecraft on the moon: Russia, China, India and Japan.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This photo provided by NASA shows the Intuitive Machines' Athena lander approaching the surface of the moon on Thursday, March 6, 2025. (NASA via AP)
