Since mid-September Ukraine’s border service has said three times that Belarus switches on repeaters that help Russian drones reach western Ukraine. No news item on the Belarusian state sites we collect named the claim, and it reached state channels once, through the press pool’s weekly review of foreign press. Pro-regime Telegram mocked the first statement and ignored the next two. On 3 October the state broadcaster’s news channel on Telegram and the same pro-regime channels seized on a Ukrainian expert’s claim that such repeaters work inside Kyiv. We cannot tell whether the silence is about this claim or about quoting Ukraine’s military officials at all.
One charge, told three times
The first statement came in mid-September, the day after the US envoy’s visit to Minsk. Demchenko, the spokesman for Ukraine’s border service, said such devices in Belarus had been switched on since the previous week. He linked them to strikes near the Yahodyn checkpoint. The next day two pro-regime channels, Belarus and the World and Shkvarka, ran the same text. They called the devices “mythical”.
On 19 September the press pool, Pul Pervogo, put the claim into its weekly review of foreign press. It quoted the Ukrainian site Strana on Demchenko’s statement, including Strana’s own remark that Belarus had confirmed neither switching the equipment on or off, nor that it exists. The review framed the quote with an “omen” of its own: when Americans come to Minsk, expect claims about fertiliser from Vilnius and about the “Belarusian threat” from Kyiv. The Telegram channels of BelTA and the broadcaster STV shared the review, as did the Hrodna regional paper.
No news item on the Belarusian state sites we collect named the claim.
The second and third statements met no answer at all. On 29 September Demchenko said Belarus periodically switches on repeaters for Russian drones. On 2 October he said the number of such mobile devices in Belarus had grown. Independent media ran 12 items on the two statements in ten outlets, among them Zerkalo, Euroradio and Pozirk. In state media and pro-regime Telegram we found none. Nobody in either segment named Demchenko after 19 September.
Then the answer came from the other side. On 3 October Serhiy Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian specialist on drones and electronic warfare known as Flash, said that one to three Russian repeaters may be working inside Kyiv. At 12:08 Minsk time NEWS.BY, the state broadcaster’s news service, posted a text by its editors on its Telegram channel that called them “Schrödinger’s repeaters”. It mocked Beskrestnov’s earlier claims about such devices in Belarus, which, it said, he had spotted in photos of storks’ nests. The text linked to its own earlier post on the storks. The channel “Nikitin” forwarded the text 43 minutes later. Shkvarka ran the same quote as its “scandal of the day”.
The state news sites we collect did not answer at all.
Not for lack of drones
A simpler explanation would be that state media were writing about other things that week. They were not. From 28 September to 4 October state sites and channels carried 40 headlines about drones, 14 of them on 2 October, the day of Demchenko’s second statement. So the state segment covered drones; it just did not cover this claim about them.
The three statements also met three different answers. The first was named and mocked, the next two were met with silence, and a Ukrainian claim that pointed the other way was taken up within hours. The answers came through Telegram, including the state broadcaster’s own news channel, and through the press pool’s review. The state news sites we collect did not answer at all. NEWS.BY’s own website could not be opened from outside Belarus, so we cannot say whether the text also ran there.
An object without an origin
The same week offered a second test. On 3 October an object entered Lithuania from Belarus, and the alert closed Vilnius airport for the morning. The crisis centre said it might have been a drone or a flock of birds, LRT reported. This time BelTA did report it, citing TASS, which cited LRT. Its item mentions NATO fighters at Zokniai, the alert and the closed airport. It leaves out one detail from the Lithuanian report, which is where the object came from.
So the state segment covered drones; it just did not cover this claim about them.
The pattern is familiar. In “The Birds Made the News” we found that the drone shot down near Kaunas on 15 September reached BelTA only through the same press pool review. That review reversed a quote from Delfi, which had said that the drone flew through Belarus.
How sure we are
The counts of what was and was not published are High, since we read every match by hand. The weakest row is the one that matters most for the thesis, because we have not yet counted how often state media quote Ukraine’s border service on other subjects.
It leaves out one detail from the Lithuanian report, which is where the object came from.
How it fits
How it fits. In three weeks the charge was mocked when it first came, met with silence the next two times, and answered with a Ukrainian counter-claim on the day that claim appeared. This fits T4: the information activity around an incident shifts with the situation, and silence is one of its forms. The data do not rule out a simpler reading, that state media never quote Ukraine’s military officials, whatever they say. If state outlets quote Ukraine’s border service on other subjects while still leaving these claims out, the silence belongs to the claim rather than to the source.
What to watch
By 31 December 2026, no Belarusian state news site that we collect names Ukraine’s repeater claims in its own item. We expect this, with Medium confidence.
By 31 December 2026, a state outlet quotes Ukraine’s border service on another subject, such as exchanges of prisoners or bodies through Belarus. We expect at least one such quote, with Low confidence; it would show that the silence is about the claim.
By 31 December 2026, the next time a neighbour reports an object entering from Belarus, BelTA’s item leaves out where it came from. We expect this, with Medium confidence.
Method and limits
We searched the full text of our corpus for the claims from 28 September to 4 October, and for the name Demchenko in state media and pro-regime Telegram from 1 July. Each match was read by hand. A sidebar on one state site that mentions a hockey goalkeeper called Demchenko produced dozens of false matches, all of which were removed. The 40 drone headlines are a title search of the state segment.