DISINFO: NEXTA is the Polish provocative Telegram channel
SUMMARY
NEXTA is the Polish provocative Telegram channel.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the protests in Belarus after the presidential elections in 2020.
NEXTA is not Polish, but the Telegram channel from the Belarusian opposition, created by Stepan Putilo - a Belarusian journalist, blogger and TV presenter. Putilo is from Belarus and studied in Poland. Several years before the presidential elections this channel was "about Belarusian realities, information about the life of officials and what they are trying to hide."
Since the Belarusian presidential elections in August 2020, the NEXTA Telegram channel increased its audience from 427,000 to its current 1,880,000 people, and became one of the main sources of information about protests in Belarus. The NEXTA Live channel is the eighth most popular Telegram channel in the world in all languages, and also the most popular Russian-language channel.
The channel mainly uses user-generated content; material that users from all over Belarus send anonymously.
On the 20th of October, a court in Minsk ruled that the NEXTA Telegram channel and its logo were extremist materials and restricted access to them. Stepan Putilo was prosecuted in Belarus for mass disorder (Article 293 of the Criminal Code). After the court decision, the NEXTA Telegram channel changed its name and logo to "HЕХТА Live".
Read similar disinfo cases alleging that NEXTA covering the Belarus protests is a project of the Polish special services and that what is happening in Minsk is primarily a Polish project.