Belarus and Propaganda of Russian World

Propaganda among youth

The main strategy is to create the impression as if Belarus acted against the interests of Russia, while now asks for excuse. Cyber-attacks have occurred one year ago, when they cracked the twitter account by Minsk, Mogilev and Gomel central police offices and they always had a content about “Belarus-Russian relations”.

In June 2018, a fake letter by Natalia Kachanovoy, the head of PA and her deputy Maksim Ryzhenkov, whose twitter account have been hacked, was distributed. Hackers even gained access to the official webpage of Investigation Committee and each in-breakings entailed the message of apologies to Russian side. After this fake twit, there was a flow of suspicious comments criticizing Belarus.

There are also some web portals, which are known in Belarus for their pro-Kremlin stance. One of them is 4esnok.by (chesnok translates in Russian as “garlic”) is officially presented as a politico-social journal that reports about Belarus. The editor-chief of this journal is Pavel Vladimirovich Rogach. Rogach a trained “rashist” (from word Russia), as he has been detected in many events in 2011 in Russia, also related to the Union of Belarussian Citizens. In addition, in some photos, he is seen with Nikolay Starikov, who is Putins and USSRs fan and there is a photo in which both sign an agreement on behalf of Russian Trade Union and Union of Belarussian Citizens. He is also seen in many training camps, which took place in Russia. Among his friends are Peter Petrovskiy (Euriasia expert) and Aleksey Dsermant who considered as propagators of Eurasianism.

There is a Young Chamber under Minsk City of Deputy Council. Officially, it was established to make the communal work popular among youth and activate their participation at the city administration. It is a kind of parliament consisting of 50 young members of BRSM party. Last year in September, Aleksey Grishenkov, deputy representative of Young Parliament Nikita Polyakevich and Maria Tumelevich, who was awarded by Lukashenko for her education achievements took part at Young Russian Forum “Native Harbour” in in Crimea, which was organized by “Rosmolodeyh” - Russian Federal Agency for Youth. Its leader is Vasiliy Yakemenko, who was the former founder of “Nashi” movement.

Practically, this organization holds up party excursion in Seliger, now after Crimea annexation focuses on gatherings in Sevastopol. Programmatic idea of these gatherings are to train the youth, cultivate their patriotic feelings, spread ideas about patriotism as national idea of Russia, and train in their national-state identity. Guests of this forum were the formal head of Crimea Aksyenov and Poklonskaya, a famous state attorney, who took the side of pro-Russian forces and who is known for her love to the last tsar Nikolay. In these forums, the young parliamentarians from Belarus seek also opportunities to get Russian grants.

Media Propaganda

Russian propagandists buy en masse twitter accounts and have created a „Politring“ with 2500 readers in twitter, which distributes memes, actual information, opinions about Belarus, links to blogs and analytics and claims to be Belarussian. Their messaging with “partners” in Belarus happens over Jabber under ciphered name and payments are made with bitcoins. It goes over either webmoney or a personal currier hands over in Belarus. One can find out who are connected with Politring through VK account, someone like Pavel Zagorec, who is probably the admin of the platform.

A person with a fake name “Arkadij Nesterenko” writes as media-consult, recruitment agent and says he is ready to pay for any of their news in other websites and portals 50 Dollars. One can contact him in Skype and offer oneself as reporter in Belarus. Moreover, if you introduce yourself as someone from the state media, who actually exist, they will immediately contact you. It is more important who wrote the text, rather than what is written in these report, news or analysis. 50 Dollars are not bad money for Belarussian journalists.

Russian intelligence has learned some lessons from years of 2014-2016, as “case of belarusophobs” has been revealed and Belarussian KGB has detained some of writers for anti-Belarusian media. Hidden interest by such news distribution is to promote local pro-Russian forces as if they represent «political alternative”. They create an image of a political "third force" that wants to reconcile the warring sides - the power and the opposition. If before, they were doing an extensive network of news projects that were represented under independent media (like 4esnok.by and others), now they are targeting “opinion leaders”. 

One of such journalists whom it was offered to write articles was Vladimir Chudentsov.  Chudentsov was offered news posting about roundtable in Vitebsk organized by «Civil Consent” between “opposition”, the government and pro-Russian movements. Information is provided as if this roundtable aimed to discuss “peaceful change between government and opposition. Aleksej Dzermant, Peter Petrovskij and Sergey Luchsha, who are known for their admiration of “Russian world” and “Eurasianism” were also attending the meeting.

Artem Agafonov, who represents himself as Belarussian politician and publicist and co-chair of “Civil Consent”, has posted news about the “roundtable event”. Earlier he was an oppositional politician, had the chair of United Civil Party Minsk regional cell.  It is also clear that Evgeniy Kostantinov (formerly an oppositionist in Vitebsk), Andrey Lazutkin (a communist), Elvira Mirsalimova (member of Civil Consent), Yuri Glushakov, a former nominee for the post of President by the Green Party and politician and activist from Gomel were entrapped into Russian propaganda agency work.

A new type of information attacks are played out over Telegram channels. Telegram was inundated with insider messages all summer 2018 relation to Lukashenko and Putin meetings, showing him as submissive to Russian Putin, as Russia plans to replace him with more appropriate candidate, also some rumors about his sudden death. Journalists, officials and business people mostly use Telegram. The tactics are different now; previously it was used to publish in some «pro-Kremlin» internet magazines, now they use «insides» (insider information). Such a politico-insider channel in Russia is «Nezygar», which commenced new active publications over Belarus. This insider channel has 160.000 users and talks absolute rot, but could manipulate some of known journalist like Konstantin Pridybaylo from BT. Lenta.ru or Life.ru disseminated similar fake news as Minsk nationalists have beaten people wearing «DNR» shorts.

January 2018, on Lifenews appeared an article, which was authored by Evgeniy Norin «Following Kievian scenario: Why do we lose Belarus?” Norin, who is a military historian wrote for Sputnik and Pogrom and never previously wrote on Belarus. The main thesis in his article was to depict Belarus as gradually becoming a traitress like Ukraine and wrote about creeping Belarusization. It points to the ongoing ousting of Russian from the public and political life of Belarus, such as that Ministry of Education removed the “1812 Great Fatherland War” out of textbooks and pointing to the no-counter action against some nationalist movements like “zmagary”, which also gets support by European countries and even approval of official Belarus.

Another article came out on «Russian Planet», one of the biggest information site. The author Andrey Karelin writes about “Belarussian Federal District”, such as Belarus as a bad partner, which does nothing, but extracts Russian money, is on the path of nationalization, helps with military deliveries to Ukraine.

Belarussian state control of media

There is ongoing censorship and control over Internet since January 2017, after peoples protests were mostly networked with users of odnoklassniki. Lukashenko dismissed the head of Information Ministry Ananich and appointed Alesya Karlyukovich in September 2017. He also dismissed all personal working for Operative-Analytical Centre – OAC. November 2017, under Council of Security started to function an “Information Committee”, which include heads of KGB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, the deputy head of PA, press secretary of PA, editor-in-chief “Sovetskaja Belarus” as to secure the information space from the threats and challenges.  

«Belpartisan» has been blocked since December 2017, as it spread out prohibited information, January 2018 Charter 97 has been blocked, in February 2018 editor-in-chief of Sovetskaja Belarus Yakubovich and Davydko (BT) resigned, who were considered as mammoths of Belarussian propaganda machine. Blockings were seen as messages and warnings to NN, Belsat, TUT.by and Svaboda.

Belarus does not possess like in Russia internet resources such as army of trolls to conduct qualitative propaganda, but uses mostly individual punishments and arrests. What else applies, is a search out comments and post on the internet and clear up identities.