There are problems with letters, serious ones. Letters from him and from us have not been delivered in over two months. They stopped accepting my letters lately. I tried to work this problem out. I was notified that almost all the letters I'd sent were taken in. Yet it's a big question whether Dzianis would receive them. They respond to all my complaints in the same way, 'Everything is fine, we pass everything on.' But Dzianis receives nothing. I don't know where else to submit my complaints. There was a suggestion to go to court, but we're not there yet.

We know very little about what is happening to Dzianis in there. Telegrams don't reach him as well. They take packages for him, unless he's in the disciplinary cell.

As far as we know, he is put in the disciplinary cell for minor violations of the regulations which other prisoners get no punishment for. And he gets ten days for each fault.

Neither do we know what to expect from the investigative bodies. Anything can happen at the court, yet there has been no word about the court so far. It is not those bodies' initiative, in principle, it's a direct order from above. Everything goes in line with the instructions from above.

I don't know whether there is sense in writing letters if they don't reach Dzianis. Another option is money transfer or packages, they should pass them.

Dzianis was subjected to serious pressure in prison. They had some sort of 'talks' regularly, without his lawyer present; they transferred him from one cell to another. We can only guess what was the nature of those 'talks'.

We were shocked to know that Dzianis had a heart attack in prison. He has never had any heart problems. Besides, he is very reserved and calm, he has never shouted or insulted anyone or swore. And then this heart attack!

All this torture stopped once we started talking about it, after his heart attack, after him being put in the disciplinary cell. So I'm sure: they are afraid of publicity most of all.

We haven't received a letter from Dzianis for over two months. I suspect someone forbade it. Without the right to correspondence.

I visited the deputy chief of prison and tried to find out why the correspondence stopped, and tried to appeal to their conscience. But they only look you in the eye and stay silent.

Dzianis wrote very touching letters. Read one a hundred times and cry a hundred times. He supported us in his letters, soothed me, 'I live here, Mama. I make my living here, accept it and don't worry, don't think about it.' But how can I?

Six months after the detainment, they made the second accusation. No investigative actions were taken, except for those 'talks'. They, probably, had to establish whether to release him. So they decided to add 'treason', Article 356 of the Criminal Code.

Yet we learned about it later. Everything was classified, the lawyer is under the non-disclosure obligation. We submitted appeals, asked to explain what Denis is being accused of. I don't know how many attempts we'd made before we knew the number of the article. Why hide this?

It is quite difficult to help in a situation like this. It will be nine months soon. No letters, no visits. We only have to hope the regime will fall and all the innocent will be released. And Dzianis will write a book for the future generations: about the things happening in today's Belarus.

I was waiting for the outcome of the search at the door of his flat. I thought they would release Dzianis soon because the cases they opened on him are worthless.

He has always worked honestly, he used open sources, submitted official requests to various institutions, received responses and wrote articles only based on those. So the only thing I can say about his first criminal case (Article 365 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus 'Interference with the actions of an internal affairs officer' – Ed.) is, 'You were the ones who gave the information, people.'

Dzianis has simply been a hostage for several months already. I consider this as pressure on the Ukrainians, for Denis has a foreign Ukrainian card, he knows many Ukrainian journalists, he took part in a lot of conferences. They want to make him some criminal he is not.

There is and there was no correspondence with him whatsoever. He is completely isolated. I received no response to any letter I wrote to him. When Novy Chas was still printed we sent it to Dzianis to the pre-trial detention centre. No response to that either. I mean, he might have written to us, but none of those letters were passed on. And we still don't know whether he received the newspaper.

It is obviously revenge on Dzianis. For his latest investigation about the Ukrainian Berkut officers employed at riot police divisions in Minsk. It is obvious because he is accused under the corresponding articles.

What we know: he is accused of alleged disclosure of information about police officers. This is a lie because Dzianis has always conducted all his investigations using the OSINT method: from open sources only, he never used any secret information. He worked with the open information, systematised it and made conclusions. Such, for example, was information from the Minsk City Executive Committee website or that of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. If anyone should be accused under those criminal articles, it should be the governmental bodies publishing information on the Internet for Dzianis to use.

There is no body of crime here, in my opinion, however, it's 'sometimes we can't worry about the law' times in our country.

Dzianis was detained at the time of another run on Ukraine. We were told that insurgents were being prepared, security services were working very hard. Dzianis gave a commentary and the journalist asked him whether the SBU officers contacted him about his investigation. Dzianis said plainly that they did not, yet he applied to them to obtain some information about the Berkut officers who appeared in Belarus. But it was given in a different context at the time, so I think it became a trigger. And then— well, the main task is to capture a person…

The authorities were not happy about the investigation of the Berkut officers. Three parts thereof were published, Dzianis was working on the fourth one. He had already collected the materials and only needed to process them. He said this fourth part would have an even bigger impact. 'I'm already working, it'll be ready soon', he said.

The fourth part was never published, we can only guess what was in it. They probably seized all the materials. Yet everything is in the open, Dzianis used a lot of information from the MIA website.

There is virtually no correspondence with Dzianis, almost no letters reach him. I think I received only one letter from him, a while ago. His relatives pass on rare words from him: greetings, gratitudes and support.

He didn't receive the Novy Chas newspaper, not once, even though we subscribed him. They showed him several issues when the paper was still printed, but didn't give it to him. His wife submitted complaints, they responded that the paper is an extremist one and they would not give it to him.

If I met Dzianis, I would say, 'Come back to work, we need you.'