The largest Belarusian independent media – speaking when others stay silent
NEXTA is the largest Belarusian media project with an international audience, followed every day by hundreds of thousands of people across the world. Across all social platforms, our community is close to 7 million followers.
INTERVIEW
Stefan Putsila on NEXTA and the Future of News
Today, NEXTA is a professional media team of 26 people producing content that reaches 890 million views every month (July 2026) across major social platforms. The project currently operates 22 channels in five languages and continues to grow and expand.
NEXTA is not only a media outlet, but an independent digital information infrastructure for Eastern Europe - connecting audiences across Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Central Asia, and the wider diaspora.
Why NEXTA Matters
NEXTA exists to deliver truth where misinformation dominates. Our mission is simple: to speak when others remain silent and to ensure access to uncensored, independent information.
We stand for a free and democratic Belarus, oppose authoritarian systems, and support democratic and pro-European values in the region. We reject dictatorship in Belarus and authoritarian regimes modeled on Lukashenko's system, and we reject Russian imperial influence and Putin's war in Europe.
We believe that independent media are essential for democratic societies - without them, countries disappear from the global conversation and public debate becomes dominated by propaganda. In the modern world, information shapes reality. NEXTA works in this information space with facts, not weapons, helping millions of people understand what is happening around them.
Reach & Impact
Every day, NEXTA connects millions of people across borders and platforms, delivering reliable information where it is needed most.
YouTube
More than 2.5 million views every day, through daily news updates, analysis, and documentaries.
X (Twitter)
More than 3 million daily impressions, driving international conversations in English.
Telegram
230,000+ readers per post - fast, direct access to information, especially in repressive environments.
TikTok & Instagram
Hundreds of thousands of views daily, reaching younger audiences and expanding across new platforms.
Audience by Platform (March 2026)
| Platform | Followers |
|---|---|
| YouTube | 4M+ |
| Twitter (X) | 1.4M |
| Telegram | 0.9M |
| TikTok | 0.5M |
| 140K | |
| 0.1M | |
| Threads | 24K |
| Total | 7M+ |
Monthly Reach (January 2026)
| Platform | Monthly Views |
|---|---|
| Telegram | 279,509,298 |
| YouTube | 228,661,847 |
| Twitter (X) | 197,818,582 |
| 18,008,971 | |
| TikTok | 19,105,744 |
| 1,132,973 | |
| Total Monthly Reach | 744,237,415 |
That is roughly three-quarters of a billion views every month across all platforms.
Audience Growth
In 2025, NEXTA gained more than 1.3 million new followers across platforms. Importantly, this growth is fully organic: people subscribe because they are interested in the content. NEXTA does not use paid promotions or artificial audience growth.
Yearly views increased by 78%, adding more than 3.26 billion additional views compared to 2024.
Our Key Formats
Over the years, NEXTA has developed several flagship content formats that have built a loyal audience and become recognizable media brands in their own right.
"Nu i Novosti!" ("Well, the News!")
NEXTA's flagship daily news program and one of the most-watched Russian-language news formats on YouTube - the backbone of our daily coverage.
"A Ya Seichas Vam Pokazhu"
Hosted by presenter Dzmitry Tankovich, combining satire, commentary, and current affairs - one of our most recognizable original productions.
Documentary Films
Investigations such as Lukashenko. Criminal Files and Lukashenko. Gold Mine reached millions of views and became major public events.
"ProBel" & Beyond
"ProBel" evolved from a NEXTA format into one of the most successful programs on Belsat TV. We also produce interviews, special reports, investigations, and livestreams.
Rather than pursuing a large number of formats, NEXTA focuses on a limited number of high-impact products, allowing the team to maintain quality, consistency, and strong audience engagement across platforms.
Exclusive Work & Original Editorial Content
NEXTA's original content is not limited to traditional field reporting. As a digital-first media organization, we create original editorial products through story selection, scripting, video editing, archival research, infographics, visual explainers, user-generated content, source-based materials, and our own editorial framing.
A significant part of our work comes from direct information submitted by readers, witnesses, insiders, and sources from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other countries in the region. Every day, NEXTA receives hundreds of messages through its submission channels - videos, photos, documents, eyewitness accounts, and sensitive information from closed environments. Many of these materials require careful verification, risk assessment, anonymization, and editorial processing before publication.
The challenge is not a lack of original information. On the contrary, NEXTA often receives more exclusive material than the current team can safely and professionally process. Working with sources inside authoritarian or high-risk environments requires particular caution, as contact with NEXTA can expose people to serious legal and personal risks.
For NEXTA, originality means not only being physically present on the ground, but also creating a distinct editorial product: verified, contextualized, visually clear, and accessible to a broad audience. This is one of the reasons NEXTA content is often cited, reused, and replicated by other media across the region.
Mission, Goals & Principles
Mission
To provide objective, timely, and verified information about the most important developments in Belarus and the world. For millions of readers, NEXTA has become a reliable - and often primary - source of truthful news about the events shaping their region.
Values & Independence
Independence is the foundation of our work. NEXTA operates independently from governments, political parties, and large corporate interests. Our core values are freedom, accuracy, and transparency. We publish only verified information and are not afraid to cover sensitive topics, even under pressure or threats. The interests of our readers always come first - we do not serve political agendas or propaganda narratives.
Our Goals
- Deliver verified information about Belarus to Belarusians, and global developments to a wider international audience
- Give a voice to people who are denied the opportunity to speak
- Report on issues others prefer to ignore
- Expose what authorities and powerful actors attempt to hide
- Respond to misinformation with verified facts
Our long-term goal is to become one of the leading media platforms in Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on Belarus.
What We Do
Today, NEXTA focuses on covering major international developments, with a particular emphasis on Eastern Europe, regional security, and global political trends. Our content focuses on important news, investigations, insider information, analysis, and verified exclusive reports. We combine speed with careful fact-checking, and specialize in explaining complex political developments in clear language that can reach the widest possible audience.
Professional Standards
NEXTA operates as a professional media organization registered in Poland and follows internationally recognized journalistic standards. The project protects its brand through registered trademarks, issues press credentials, and continuously invests in newsroom development, fact-checking, and editorial processes.
In 2025, NEXTA was selected for the Google News Initiative and the FT Strategies News Sustainability programme, gaining access to strategic consulting, AI-focused training, Associated Press expertise, and membership in WAN-IFRA, the world's largest network of news publishers. NEXTA also participates in professional media development spaces, including training by Press Club, events such as Belarus Days in Brussels and BIIM, and cooperation with the UN Special Rapporteur on Belarus and research projects by JXFund.
Independent media experts have noted NEXTA's evolution from an activist initiative into a professional multiplatform media outlet - highlighting its ability to maintain a strong presence across YouTube, Telegram, and X, combine professional journalism with user-generated content, react quickly to major events, and adapt to changing conditions.
Our Audience
NEXTA's audience is broad, international, and highly engaged - bringing together policymakers, journalists, analysts, civil society leaders, and millions of ordinary readers who rely on independent information across Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and beyond. What unites this diverse community is a shared demand for reliable, independent news in a region where access to information is often restricted, censored, or manipulated.
In countries such as Belarus, where independent media have been almost completely eliminated, NEXTA remains one of the few sources of uncensored information - reaching more than 3.4 million people monthly, often through VPN access and alternative channels. In Ukraine and Russia, the combined reach of our audience approaches 40 million people, making NEXTA an important independent voice in the current geopolitical environment.
Our Sources
Many of our sources are ordinary people. Thanks to our multi-million audience, we frequently receive first-hand information from witnesses and insiders. This allows us to report quickly on breaking events while verifying information through expert analysis and references to major international media.
Our Strengths
NEXTA's key advantage is its experience and professional team. The project works across multiple formats - from short breaking-news posts on Telegram to large-scale investigative documentaries on YouTube. The trust of our audience and the constant flow of user-generated content allow us to publish unique materials and exclusive stories that often appear in the information space for the first time through NEXTA.
Our Team
The NEXTA team consists of more than 25 media professionals working across different areas of journalism and media production. Despite its relatively small size, the team produces daily news, investigations and analytical reports, documentary films, livestreams and special broadcasts, and creative video formats for social platforms.
Each platform is managed by a small group of dedicated editors - some focus on YouTube production, others on Telegram and breaking news, while additional team members manage X, TikTok, Instagram, and video post-production. This compact structure allows the team to react quickly to major events and publish information in real time.
NEXTA's specialists use modern production technologies and advanced equipment. The team continuously develops new storytelling formats, studies new technologies such as Unreal Engine, and integrates AI-assisted workflows to improve efficiency without compromising quality. The core editorial team works primarily from Warsaw, while continuing to receive exclusive information from inside Belarus through trusted sources.
With a compact team of around 20-25 people, NEXTA delivers output and reach that would normally require a newsroom several times larger - making the project not only impactful, but exceptionally efficient.
The Story of NEXTA
From a YouTube music channel recorded in a dormitory closet to a lifeline of independent information for millions across Eastern Europe.
A music channel becomes a voice
In October 2015, 17-year-old Stsiapan Putsila launched the NEXTA YouTube channel as a music project - its first video a cover of "There Is No Choice," dedicated to the 2015 Belarusian election. The first recordings were made in a dormitory closet with borrowed microphones. The name carried a double meaning: "Nekhta" means "someone" in Belarusian, while NEXT/A suggested the next generation. Putsila moved to Poland to study at the Katowice Film School, and the project gradually shifted from music toward satirical and critical coverage of political events.
From blogger to the country's largest political channel
In 2017, NEXTA launched "Well, the News!", still running today. In February 2018, authorities opened a criminal case against the 19-year-old Putsila for "insulting the president" over the satirical video "LukaSherlock"; he left Belarus one day before searches began. He launched the NEXTA and NEXTA Live Telegram channels, and his program "Subjective. NEXTA on Belsat" drew record numbers. NEXTA's reporting even contributed to the resignation of Interior Minister Igor Shunevich.
In autumn 2019, NEXTA released the documentary Lukashenko. Criminal Files, which reached more than a million views in a single day and 3.7 million in total, with 40,000+ comments - an unprecedented result for Belarusian political YouTube. Lukashenko himself publicly reacted for the first time. Journalist Vladimir Chudentsov, who assisted with the film, was detained and spent five years in prison.
The main platform of the Belarusian protests
After the 9 August 2020 election, NEXTA Live became the central platform for real-time information and coordination - gaining 800,000+ subscribers in a single week and reaching 2.1 million, the largest Russian-language Telegram channel in the world at the time. At its peak, the channel's bot received up to 300 messages per minute, even while the government shut down the internet. Reuters, CNN, BBC, The Guardian, and The New York Times described NEXTA as a key platform covering the protests.
On 14 August 2020, Belarusian authorities placed Stsiapan Putsila on an interstate wanted list. Leaked KGB databases later revealed discussions of offering 300,000 euros to deliver him from Poland to Belarus. In October 2020, a Minsk court declared the NEXTA Live channel and its logo "extremist materials," and Putsila and Roman Protasevich became the first Belarusian citizens added to the national "terrorist list."
Becoming a professional media organization
On 8 March 2021, NEXTA released Lukashenko. Golden Bottom, exposing the ruler's hidden wealth; it reached more than 7 million views. On 23 May 2021, a Ryanair flight was forcibly diverted to Minsk and former NEXTA editor Roman Protasevich was arrested - a global scandal. From spring 2021, the regime launched the largest wave of political repression in Europe since the Stalin era: 50,000+ detained between 2020 and 2025 and over half a million Belarusians forced to leave the country.
In 2022, a Warsaw court rejected Belarus's extradition request for Putsila. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NEXTA's Telegram channels again surged past two million readers, with the team working around the clock in three shifts. In April 2022, Belarus's Supreme Court declared NEXTA, NEXTA Live, and Luxta "terrorist organizations." On X, the project grew past 1.2 million followers and expanded coverage to Ukraine and Central Asia, becoming a regional information hub.
On 3 May 2023, a Belarusian court sentenced NEXTA team members in absentia - Stsiapan Putsila to 20 years, Jan Rudik to 19 years, and Roman Protasevich to 8 years. In 2024, NEXTA's YouTube growth exceeded 500% in a single year, and the team completed a new Warsaw office and a modern production studio using Unreal Engine - built without external financial backing. By December 2024, NEXTA had become the largest Russian-language news channel on YouTube.
It's Not Just About Numbers - It's About Trust
Beyond the metrics, NEXTA helps people stay informed, question propaganda, reconnect with their identity, and discuss politics, language, and society within their families and communities.
"My father started speaking Kazakh more often. We now communicate strictly in Kazakh. The day I subscribed him to NEXTA on Telegram became a turning point." - A reader from Kazakhstan
"Thank you, NEXTA. You're one of the few channels I watch regularly because I trust your objectivity." - NEXTA audience feedback
We have thousands of stories like this - moments where NEXTA's work influenced not just opinions but lives. Every view, every story, and every subscriber represents real people, real change, and real impact. This is soft power in action.
Truth, where it's needed most
From Belarus to Kazakhstan, millions of people come to NEXTA for independent information in a world full of disinformation.
Watch NEXTAAudience & Impact
NEXTA reaches roughly three-quarters of a billion views every month and continues to grow - all organically. Here is what that looks like.
Monthly Views by Platform (January 2026)
Audience Growth
Growth is fully organic - NEXTA does not use paid promotion or artificial audience growth.
Reach by Region
-
~40M Ukraine + Russia
Combined monthly reach - an important independent voice in the region. -
3.4M Belarus
Reached monthly despite censorship - often via VPN and alternative channels. -
Worldwide International audience
Kazakhstan, Poland, Central Asia, Europe and the wider diaspora.
Figures are the regional reach numbers stated in NEXTA's own materials. They are not mutually exclusive shares of a single total - the chart visualizes their relative scale.