Tag "Belarus"
By EU vs Disinfo Pro-Kremlin disinformation increasingly exploits Belarusians’ trust in local news to question sovereignty of Belarus and undermine its people, language and culture. “Over 40 crews of harvester operators reached the milestone of 1 thousand tons of grain” – a proud headline informs the readers of a regional news website in the Grodno region in the west of Belarus. But beyond the impressive achievements of Grodno harvester operators the website provides more…
By EU vs Disinfo Last week, the pro-Kremlin media claimed that Russophobia is Lithuania’s main export, but in reality, it’s mineral fuels and machinery. But this case offers a great opportunity to ask, what’s the main “export” of the pro-Kremlin media? Based on the more than 70 cases of pro-Kremlin disinformation collected this past week, Russophobia is supposedly found in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the US…
By EU vs Disinfo Programs produced in Russia make up about 49% of prime-time content on Belarusian TV channels, research by the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) found. For the week of November 16-25, 2018, the BAJ monitored prime-time content of the Belarusian TV channels that comprise the government-approved compulsory publicly available TV package. The research revealed that 30% of the political talk shows and programs that the Belarusian TV channels broadcast on…
By Edward Lucas, for CEPA The West Needs to Formulate a Belarus Policy Before It Is Too Late Most countries don’t know what goes on in Europe’s last dictatorship. Most don’t care, either. For all but a handful of its western neighbors, Belarus is a geopolitical black hole, neglected and ignored in equal measure. The regime in Minsk has signaled some desire to improve ties with the United States, lifting a cap…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia Sometimes the simultaneous appearance of two stories apparently unrelated sheds light on issues more clearly than either of them does on its own. That is the case of two stories today from Belarus, one about Moscow’s promotion of Russophile books in that country and the other about the release of a Belarusian version of “Forrest Gump.” Nasha Niva has investigated how money from the…
On March 14, eight days before the terrorist attacks in Brussels, the Russian media outlet Lifenews reported (archive) that two Belarusian brothers, Ivan and Aleksey Dovbash, and an accomplice, Marat Yunusov, were planning a terrorist attack in Belgium. After terrorist attacks did take place in Belgium the following week, Lifenews doubled down, naming the brothers Dovbash and Yunusov as the “alleged” suicide bombers who attacked a metro station and airport in Brussels. Lifenews also reported (archive)…
An article about the impact of propaganda on public opinion in Belarus written by the editor-in-chief of charter97.org Natallia Radzina has been published by the Ukrainian Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies: Today, the Belarusian public opinion about the events in Ukraine is mostly negative. The main reason for this state of affairs is that apart from the portal “Charter’97” and a few other remaining independent media outlets, all…
Viktor Denisenko, a Belarusian researcher at the University of Vilnius, says that a Russian hybrid war in Belarus could take one of two forms – “with Lukashenka” or “without Lukashenka” – but that in either case, Belarus would likely lose not only the conflict but its sovereignty as a country. In a report to the Congress of Belarusian Researchers earlier this month, Denisenko noted the term “hybrid war” had been…
Russia is currently seeking to raise the prospect of an “illusory” Maidan in Belarus to set the stage for Russia to intervene militarily in that country, depose Alyaksandr Lukashenka and install as Belarusian president a more pliant figure who would eventually agree to the absorption of Belarus by Russia, according to Kseniya Kirillova. Last week, Kirillova reported that two Mensk experts, Arseniy Sivitsky and Yury Tsarik, had suggested that Vladimir…
“In war, avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak”, Sun Tzu said. Russia has taken this to heart in spinning its narrative surrounding the Ukraine crisis, leaving Europe at a loss on how to counter Moscow’s relentless propaganda campaign. Russia’s success in the propaganda war is chiefly due to the Kremlin’s grip on the country’s main media outlets, and the ease with which these can penetrate our…
