By honoring Andrzej Poczobut and Mzia Amaghlobeli, the 2025 Sakharov Prize sends a strong message of international solidarity in the face of Russian authoritarianism. In Belarus, Andrzej Poczobut, correspondent for the daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, is serving an eight-year sentence for “undermining national security” after covering pro-democracy protests and denouncing the repression of Alyaksandr Lukashenko’s regime. In Georgia, Mzia Amaghlobeli, founder of independent media outlets, was sentenced to two years in prison after being arrested in connection with a protest, a case that raises questions about the state of freedom of expression in a country undergoing democratic decline.
This award reinforces the message to authoritarian regimes: you cannot silence the truth without it finding other ways to be heard. In Belarus, where more than 400 political prisoners are still being held, including several journalists, media repression has intensified since the 2020 protests. In Georgia, Mzia Amaghlobeli represents a press under constant strain, in a country where nearly 75% of journalists reported in 2023 that they had been subjected to political or economic pressure in the past two years, according to the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics. This authoritarian drift directly threatens the country’s European integration.
Beyond being a gesture of recognition, the Sakharov Prize calls for collective responsibility: ensuring that freedom of the press remains an active pillar of European democracy. In the face of Russia’s information warfare, defending a free media space is no longer a symbolic gesture, but a strategy for democratic resilience.