Siarhei Shelest worked as an operator in the Ammonia-3 workshop at the Grodno Azot factory. He was dismissed for being absent from work, even though at the time he was serving an administrative arrest: he and a colleague had been criminalised for hanging the Belarusian national flag on a television tower during the 2020 protests. Siarhei also distributed leaflets in mailboxes with an invitation to join an independent trade union.

In September 2021, he was arrested as part of a criminal investigation for 'high treason' involving several employees of Belarusian factories who supported local strikes in 2020 and were members of the Rabochy Rukh labor rights group. On September 21, 2021, Rabochy Rukh was labeled as an 'extremist' initiative, a decision that sparked the arrests of many workers across the country. In early 2023, Siarhei Shelest was found guilty under all the articles and sentenced to 14 years in a medium-security penal colony. In the fall of 2024, the conditions of his imprisonment were made more severe and he was transferred to a prison.