Table of contents:
- Excesses at the start of protests
- For the sake of a common cause, you should forget about grievances
- Analysis of mistakes and plans for the future
Video: Background of one interview: Belarusian events in the mirror of the RT channel
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
On September 8, 2020, a month after the start of the protests in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko gave a landmark interview to well-known Russian journalists, including the editor-in-chief of the RT channel Margarita Simonyan. The President spoke about the ways out of the crisis and how he sees the future of Belarus.
For RT, the political life of Belarus is one of the priority topics, because Russia has fraternal relations with this country. Over the past month, the channel's journalists have had occasion to attend rallies of both opposition supporters and adherents of the authorities, and talk to law enforcement officials. Correspondents strictly adhered to professional ethics and tried to cover the points of view of the opposing sides as impartially as possible.
Excesses at the start of protests
Over the past month, the media widely quoted the words of President Lukashenko that Belarus will have interesting elections, and that after the elections it will become "even more interesting." Nevertheless, on August 9, 2020, citizens and guests of the country learned a lot of new things. The Belarusian authorities suddenly realized that the people may have political convictions that differ from the "general line". Citizens were surprised to realize that riot police are not always polite and correct, especially if fragments of bricks are flying at them.
For the journalists of the RT channel, the behavior of representatives of the Belarusian law enforcement agencies was no less a surprise. Already on August 9, Semyon Pegov, a member of the monthly Voenkora program and a blogger on the RT in Russian website, was arrested. Nobody expected that law enforcement officers would detain a law-abiding journalist. Also on the first election day, riot police arrested three stringers from the RT network Ruptly.
Semyon Pegov was released the next day, from which the RT correspondent in Minsk Konstantin Pridybailo concluded that the Belarusian police had learned how to treat accredited press representatives. Alas, on August 10, despite the presence of accreditation documents, riot police detained Pridybailo himself. The journalist spent several hours in a stuffy paddy wagon before he was released.
Upon learning of the arrests of her employees, Margarita Simonyan stated that the arrests were illegal, especially since the journalists of the channel she headed were absolutely impartial. RT employees were released after the intervention of the Russian embassy.
The siloviki quickly realized their mistakes - on August 2, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Belarus Yuri Karaev, on the air of the state channel ONT, apologized for the excesses to the accidentally injured and emphasized that he had ordered his subordinates not to detain the journalists. In fairness, it should be noted that, according to Konstantin Pridybailo, he was treated politely enough and did not use violence. French and American police officers are much tougher in similar situations.
For the sake of a common cause, you should forget about grievances
Protests in Minsk continued. On August 17, a strike of Belteleradiocompany employees began. Abroad, the dismissal of journalists, even famous ones, but who do not agree with the channel's policy, is practically the norm. However, peaceful Belarus was not ready for such an incident.
Due to the fact that the work was stopped by employees of technical departments, the release of programs was threatened. And then Lukashenko announced that he would invite specialists from Russia to Belarus. Even the president's words were enough for many of the strikers to return to their jobs.
After that, the tonality of the programs of the Belarusian television changed somewhat. There were programs about how the color revolutions affected the economies of other countries, in particular, Ukraine: they led to the collapse of the economy, mass unemployment. There were also reports on the dispersal of unauthorized rallies in the West. The spectators were able to make sure that the Belarusian law enforcement officers are acting much more correctly than their colleagues from the European Union.
Analysis of mistakes and plans for the future
On Tuesday, September 8, Margarita Simonyan suddenly asked the residents of Minsk on Twitter: "Where is it fashionable to have breakfast here?" The editor-in-chief of RT and several other well-known Russian journalists arrived in the capital of Belarus at the invitation of Lukashenko.
According to Simonyan, she was pleasantly struck by the sincerity of Alexander Grigorievich - he openly admitted all mistakes and did not shy away from answering the most tricky questions. The President announced the upcoming constitutional reform and said that he simply could not give Belarus to the people who were going to rob it. “My country is here, and I will defend this country,” Lukashenka said. The President is optimistic and confident that Belarus has a great future in an alliance with Russia.
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