Reporter for Russian paper sentenced to 3 years in Belarus

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A court in Belarus has sentenced a reporter for the now-closed local edition of one of Russia’s most popular newspapers to three years in prison for insulting the country’s authoritarian leader. Hienadz Mazheyka was sentenced Thursday for a 2021 article in Komsomolskaya Pravda that cited an acquaintance of a man killed in a police raid as speaking favorably of him. The story angered President Alexander Lukashenko, who has suppressed opposition and criticism with increasing severity. The man killed, an IT worker named Andrei Zeltsar, was shot when agents of the Belarusian KGB raided an apartment building in what was described as a search for terrorists. A KGB officer also died in the raid..