Monitoring pro-russian propaganda on belarus state television

Pro-russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da on belarus state tele­vi­sion. Down­load PDF.

Image cre­at­ed by BAJ using Chat­G­PT

Objectives and methodology

Mon­i­tor­ing objec­tives and meth­ods:

The prin­ci­pal objec­tive of the mon­i­tor­ing is to ascer­tain and doc­u­ment the exis­tence, extent, con­tent, and for­mat of pro-Russ­ian (includ­ing anti-West­ern and anti-Ukrain­ian) pro­pa­gan­da on major Belaru­sian state-run tele­vi­sion chan­nels, along with its dis­sem­i­na­tors and trans­mit­ters.

The mon­i­tor­ing results should assist in either con­firm­ing or refut­ing the hypoth­e­sis that the lead­ing state TV chan­nels of Belarus present a media image of real­i­ty that is heav­i­ly influ­enced by the “Russ­ian world” ideas. Addi­tion­al­ly, they should demon­strate how this media land­scape has evolved com­pared to pre­vi­ous stud­ies.

The mon­i­tor­ing was con­duct­ed using both quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive research meth­ods.

For a detailed description of the methodology

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists con­duct­ed com­pa­ra­ble stud­ies between 2018 and 2021, which per­mits a com­par­i­son of the results and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of trends in the broad­cast­ing of state tele­vi­sion. It is impor­tant to note that the pre­ced­ing stud­ies were con­duct­ed before the full-scale inva­sion of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion into Ukraine.

The mon­i­tor­ing peri­od is from Feb­ru­ary 1st through Feb­ru­ary 29th.

• Feb­ru­ary 1st through Feb­ru­ary 4th — test­ing peri­od;
• Feb­ru­ary 5th through Feb­ru­ary 29th — main phase.

The mon­i­tor­ing was timed with the des­ig­nat­ed Sin­gle Vot­ing Day in Belarus, which encom­passed the elec­tions of deputies to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and local coun­cils. How­ev­er, unlike in pre­vi­ous elec­tion cam­paigns, the BAJ did not con­duct mon­i­tor­ing of media cov­er­age of the elec­tions. This is a process where­by the allo­ca­tion of time and space by var­i­ous media out­lets to polit­i­cal forces, the man­ner of their rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the media, and oth­er relat­ed fac­tors are mea­sured. This was not done in the cur­rent elec­tion due to the severe sup­pres­sion of dis­sent in the coun­try and the lack of choice as such.

The BAJ exam­ined the infor­ma­tion pol­i­cy pur­sued by the most promi­nent Belaru­sian state TV chan­nels dur­ing this peri­od, as well as the extent of pro-Russ­ian, anti-Ukrain­ian, and anti-West­ern pro­pa­gan­da dis­sem­i­nat­ed by these chan­nels dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign.

In addi­tion to the elec­tions in Belarus, the mon­i­tor­ing peri­od encom­passed some oth­er events of vary­ing sig­nif­i­cance, sub­ject to active cov­er­age and com­men­tary in the Belaru­sian state media. These include:

• The meet­ings between Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka and heads of var­i­ous Belaru­sian agen­cies and depart­ments, as well as heads of Russ­ian provinces;
• Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s inter­view with U.S. polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Tuck­er Carl­son;
• 30th anniver­sary of the with­draw­al of Sovi­et troops from Afghanistan;
• Stead­fast Defend­er 2024 NATO exer­cise.

1. Dur­ing the mon­i­tor­ing peri­od, the fol­low­ing indi­ca­tors were deter­mined:
2. The pro­por­tion of tele­vi­sion prod­ucts pro­duced in Rus­sia or with its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the prime time broad­cast­ing of Belarus 1, All-Nation­al TV (ONT), and Cap­i­tal Tele­vi­sion (STV) chan­nels.

To achieve this objec­tive, the total num­ber of pro­grams broad­cast dur­ing prime time (between 7 pm and 12 am) on each chan­nel was cal­cu­lat­ed, as well as the num­ber of Russ­ian pro­grams and the dura­tion of their broad­cast.

All pro­grams (news, movies, talk shows, sports, con­certs), includ­ing those that com­menced or con­clud­ed out­side the des­ig­nat­ed prime time peri­od, were con­sid­ered, irre­spec­tive of whether they fell with­in the afore­men­tioned time­frame.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the dura­tion of these pro­grams dur­ing prime time was quan­ti­fied in min­utes.

3.2. The pres­ence of a Russ­ian agen­da in Belaru­sian state TV chan­nels, which occu­py the first three posi­tions in the essen­tial pack­age of pub­licly avail­able TV pro­grams and are state-financed (Belarus 1, ONT, STV), rep­re­sents a note­wor­thy phe­nom­e­non.

The fol­low­ing shows were mon­i­tored:

• Evening news­casts on Belarus 1 TV chan­nel:

Mon-Sat “Panora­ma” (9 pm),

Sun “The Main Broad­cast” (9 pm);

• Evening news­casts on the All-Nation­al TV (ONT) chan­nel:

Mon-Fri “Our News” (8:30 pm),

Sat “Depends on Per­spec­tive” (8 pm),

Sun “Our Time” (8 pm).

• Evening news­casts on the Cap­i­tal TV (STV) chan­nel:

Mon-Sat “24 Hours” (7:30 pm),

Sun “The Week” (7:30 pm).

All pieces, includ­ing those fea­tur­ing Russ­ian polit­i­cal actors or news items relat­ed to Rus­sia, were record­ed, regard­less of whether they con­cerned Belaru­sian-Russ­ian rela­tions (includ­ing those relat­ed to sports, cul­ture, or inci­dents).  Their num­ber and dura­tion were cal­cu­lat­ed. The inclu­sion of such mate­ri­als in the announce­ments was also con­sid­ered.

1.  Pres­ence of mes­sages asso­ci­at­ed with pro-Russ­ian (anti-Western, anti-Ukrain­ian) pro­pa­gan­da

The list of mes­sages was open. Each of the mon­i­tors inde­pen­dent­ly iden­ti­fied and record­ed the mes­sages to be reg­is­tered with­in mon­i­tor­ing. Where nec­es­sary, approach­es to mes­sage qual­i­fi­ca­tion were dis­cussed and adjust­ed.

Among oth­ers, pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da mes­sages were record­ed that did not direct­ly name Rus­sia or Belarus (for exam­ple, about the “decay­ing hos­tile West”, the war in Ukraine, the oppo­si­tion labeled as the West’s retain­ers, the threat to the Union State of Rus­sia and Belarus, etc.), but obvi­ous­ly pro­mot­ed Russia’s nar­ra­tives or sim­i­lar nar­ra­tives of the Belaru­sian author­i­ties.

Key monitoring results

1. 1. The pro­por­tion of TV prod­ucts pro­duced in Rus­sia or with its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the prime time broad­cast­ing of the three Belaru­sian state TV chan­nels includ­ed in the essen­tial pub­licly avail­able pack­age:
   2. Num­ber and dura­tion of prime time broad­casts of Belarus 1, ONT, and STV chan­nels of tele­vi­sion prod­ucts pro­duced in Rus­sia or with its par­tic­i­pa­tion.

   	Total num­ber of TV pro­grams	Of which pro­duced by Russ­ian TV	Dura­tion of Russ­ian-pro­duced TV pro­grams (out of 125 prime­time hours)	Share of Russ­ian-pro­duced TV pro­grams	Per­cent­age of Russ­ian-pro­duced TV pro­grams in terms of dura­tion
   Belarus 1	140	36	71 hrs 25 min.	25.7%	57.13%
   ONT	125	74	57 hrs 25 min.	59.2%	45.9%
   STV	206	46	60 hrs 20 min.	22.3%	48.2%

    

   1. Com­par­i­son of 2019, 2020, 2024 prime time Russ­ian pro­grams, %.

   	2019	2020	2024
   Belarus 1	63	63.6	57.13
   ONT	72	79	45.9
   STV	47	56	48.2

    

   Find­ings:

   1. Russ­ian-made pro­grams con­tin­ue to account for a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the con­tent broad­cast by Belaru­sian TV chan­nels. This has an unde­ni­able impact on the infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty of the Repub­lic of Belarus.
   2. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, these num­bers have declined in recent years.

    

   2. Pro-Russ­ian and anti-Western pro­pa­gan­da in the evening news­casts on Belarus 1, ONT, and STV.

   2.1 Num­ber of pro­pa­gan­dist reports and its per­cent­age of the total num­ber of reports

   	Belarus 1	ONT	STV
   Total num­ber of sto­ries	339	345	356
   Con­tain­ing pro­pa­gan­dist mes­sage	126 (37.1%)	132 (38.2%)	121 (33.9%)

    

   2.2 Num­ber of sto­ries with spe­cif­ic pro­pa­gan­da mes­sages and their share in the total num­ber of sto­ries with pro­pa­gan­da mes­sages.

   	Belarus 1	ONT	STV
   Total num­ber of sto­ries with pro­pa­gan­da mes­sages	126	132	121
   Anti-Ukraine	26 (17.3%)	26 (13.8%)	19 (10.3%)
   Anti-West	54 (36%)	62 (32.9%)	66 (35.9%)
   Anti-US	12 (8%)	24 (12.7%)	10 (5.4%)
   War hys­te­ria	9 (6%)	20 (10.6%)	10 (5.4%)
   Tenets	4 (2.7%)	18 (9.6%)	20 (10.87%)
   Self-suf­fi­cien­cy	6 (4%)	5 (2.65)	8 (4.3%)
   Sid­ing with Rus­sia	39 (26%)	33 (17.55%)	51 (27.7%)
   Total num­ber of pro­pa­gan­da mes­sages (with mul­ti­ple mes­sages per sto­ry pos­si­ble)	150	188	184

Main messages of pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western propaganda

Anti-Ukraine

(Adver­tise­ment): They made their choice [footage of war and dev­as­ta­tion], now it is your turn to make yours [footage of pros­per­i­ty] (Uni­fied Vot­ing Day).

Do you want that kind of democ­ra­cy?

1. Ukraine is in a state of chaos, and the strug­gle for pow­er and mon­ey is inten­si­fy­ing. It’s been ten years since the Maid­an riots, and the coun­try has real­ly fall­en apart.

1. The war in Ukraine is the West­’s war against Rus­sia. The West is push­ing for the con­tin­u­a­tion of the fight­ing in Ukraine while it is itself in decay.
2. Ukraine is los­ing West­ern sup­port. Sup­port­ing Ukraine is becom­ing increas­ing­ly con­tro­ver­sial in the West.

1. Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices recruit our peo­ple for sab­o­tage in Rus­sia.

Anti-West

1. Con­tin­u­ing mil­i­tary actions in Ukraine, the Mid­dle East, and oth­er coun­tries is ini­ti­at­ed by the West.
2. The West inter­feres in the affairs of sov­er­eign states and manip­u­lates «human rights.»
3. Euro­pean politi­cians are out of touch with their peo­ple; anti-Russ­ian sanc­tions and sup­port for Ukraine are a blow to Euro­peans them­selves.
4. The West­’s plan for the par­ti­tion of Belarus after the defeat of Rus­sia.

Anti-US

1. The USA only cares about world pow­er.
2. Amer­i­cans are to blame for the war in Ukraine.
3. The USA diverges from Europe.
4. Amer­i­ca is in decay.
5. There real­ly isn’t any free­dom of speech in Amer­i­ca.
6. The Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States is old and inca­pac­i­tat­ed.
7. The US State Depart­ment and spe­cial ser­vices, with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of oth­er West­ern coun­tries, have devel­oped and are imple­ment­ing a long-term strat­e­gy to desta­bi­lize the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus.
8. Israel and the US are killing peo­ple in Gaza.

War hysteria

1. Belarus is dragged into the war.
2. NATO is clank­ing tracks near our bor­ders. We are com­pelled to respond appro­pri­ate­ly.
3. The West, the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine, and the fugi­tives want to seize our lands; fugi­tives long for Rus­si­a’s defeat in the war with Ukraine.
4. Our war doc­trine is defen­sive, but we are pre­pared to strike back at the West. The ene­my shall not pass
5. We have nuclear weapons, and Europe is afraid of us.
6. Moscow has not attacked any­one but will defend itself with nuclear weapons.

Tenets (USSR nostalgia, self-sufficiency)

1. Pre­serv­ing his­to­ry, restor­ing jus­tice.
2. The coun­tries of the for­mer Sovi­et Union should come clos­er togeth­er. A shared glo­ri­ous past.
3. Our young peo­ple do not need West­ern edu­ca­tion.
4. Thriv­ing in the face of sanc­tions.

Siding with Russia

1. When we’re unit­ed, sanc­tions don’t mat­ter.
2. We’re always going to be aligned with Rus­sia, and in this posi­tion, we can hold our own against any oppo­nent.
3. Rus­sians are at home in Belarus. Com­mon Father­land — from Brest to Vladi­vos­tok.
4. The suc­cess of the Union State — a new civ­i­liza­tion that will save the world — hinges on the out­come of the elec­tions in Belarus.

1. Sum­ma­ry table «West vs East»

Key takeaways:

1. The pro­por­tion of Russ­ian agen­da items in the evening news­casts of Belaru­sian TV chan­nels was found to be small­er than in 2019–2020. This was observed both in terms of the total num­ber of pro­grams pro­duced in Rus­sia and the time of their broad­cast in prime time. In gen­er­al, the sub­ject mat­ter per­tained to eco­nom­ic or sport­ing mat­ters, with a notable focus on the top­ic of col­lab­o­ra­tion with Russ­ian provinces.
2. Con­cur­rent­ly, numer­ous mate­ri­als exhib­it­ed pro-Russ­ian nar­ra­tives. The pri­ma­ry focus was on the sub­jects of war, the stance towards Ukraine, and the rela­tion­ship with West­ern coun­tries. Nev­er­the­less, it would be erro­neous to assume that these nar­ra­tives are mere­ly a reit­er­a­tion of pro-Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da. Rather, they are the nar­ra­tives of the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, which, while shar­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties with the afore­men­tioned pro­pa­gan­da, also exhib­it dis­tinc­tive «nation­al pecu­liar­i­ties.»
3. The per­son­al­i­ty cult of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka is on the rise. He was pre­sent­ed as an expe­ri­enced politi­cian who not only pre­served peace in Belarus but also tried to pre­vent a new world war.
4. The com­plic­i­ty of the Belaru­sian regime in the war against Ukraine is over­looked to por­tray the coun­try as a peace-lov­ing nation that does not engage in mil­i­tary con­flicts. This is in con­trast to the por­tray­al of West­ern coun­tries, which are alleged to be seek­ing to weak­en Rus­sia and the Union State.
5. The war hys­te­ria was fueled by the cir­cu­la­tion of nar­ra­tives con­cern­ing the prox­im­i­ty of NATO tanks to the Belaru­sian bor­der, as well as the pur­port­ed inten­tions of the col­lec­tive West to invade the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus (includ­ing from the ter­ri­to­ry of Ukraine and with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of «fugi­tives»). The col­lec­tive West is accused of ini­ti­at­ing the con­flict in Ukraine and of hav­ing a vest­ed inter­est in the war.
6. West­ern coun­tries are depict­ed as expe­ri­enc­ing a decline, fail­ing to imple­ment mea­sures to sup­port their cit­i­zens in the con­text of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis (which orig­i­nat­ed from sup­port­ing Ukraine and impos­ing sanc­tions against Rus­sia and Belarus). Euro­pean cit­i­zens have begun to chal­lenge their gov­ern­ments, result­ing in inter­nal con­flicts, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on farmer protests.
7. The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is por­trayed as the dom­i­nant pow­er in the region, with Europe and Ukraine oper­at­ing as its sub­or­di­nates. Con­cur­rent­ly, news pro­grams have been observed to engage in the prac­tice of deri­sive­ly cri­tiquing the actions of a sit­ting US pres­i­dent.
8. The Sin­gle Vot­ing Day was pro­mot­ed with con­sid­er­able enthu­si­asm. The pri­ma­ry mes­sages con­veyed by the elec­tions in Belarus were that they were more demo­c­ra­t­ic than those held in the West, that West­ern observers were not invit­ed due to their appar­ent bias, and that the major­i­ty of Belaru­sian cit­i­zens sup­port the incum­bent author­i­ties.
9. The sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Sovi­et past con­tin­ued. Pri­mar­i­ly, the theme of the Great Patri­ot­ic War, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple per­pe­trat­ed by the West­ern­ers (Ger­mans) and Ukraini­ans. The war in Afghanistan was also glo­ri­fied. How­ev­er, the dis­course of a shared his­tor­i­cal lega­cy with Rus­sia was less fre­quent­ly artic­u­lat­ed.

Annex­es:

1. Mon­i­tors’ assess­ments
2. Direct speech

Monitors’ assessments

1. ONT evening news mon­i­tor­ing results

In the dai­ly evening pro­gram “Our News” (with an aver­age dura­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 50 min­utes), Russ­ian issues were not giv­en a sig­nif­i­cant amount of cov­er­age. There were few, if any, nar­ra­tives that focused on Rus­sia or Russ­ian polit­i­cal actors. In the mean­time, the ONT web­site con­tin­ued to dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion about Russ­ian events and per­son­al­i­ties.

The pro­gram “Infor­ma­tion Chan­nel,” includ­ed in the ONT broad­cast­ing grid, mer­its par­tic­u­lar atten­tion. On Mon­days, the pro­gram starts at 5:20 pm, fol­lowed by “Our News” (20 min­utes) at 6:00 pm, and then the “Infor­ma­tion Chan­nel” con­tin­ues until 6:55 pm. Tuesday’s pro­gram starts at 5:20 pm (40 min­utes) and con­tin­ues at 7:15 pm (55 min­utes). Wednes­day and Thursday’s sched­ule is the same as Mon­day. This is a Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da pro­gram that address­es the war in Ukraine and oth­er relat­ed top­ics.

Dur­ing the mon­i­tor­ing peri­od, numer­ous evening news pro­grams addressed the theme of the Great Patri­ot­ic War, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of pre­serv­ing his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry. Addi­tion­al­ly, reports were made about the crim­i­nal geno­cide against the Belaru­sian peo­ple, which is cur­rent­ly being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office of Belarus. Such nar­ra­tives illus­trate the neces­si­ty of engag­ing younger gen­er­a­tions in the safe­guard­ing of his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge. Cor­re­spon­dents have doc­u­ment­ed the remarks of stu­dents and school­child­ren on the sub­ject. Con­cur­rent­ly, I assess that the direct nar­ra­tive of “Com­mon His­to­ry [with Rus­sia]” is of a less­er qual­i­ty than that observed dur­ing the pre­vi­ous mon­i­tor­ing of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.

Lukashenka’s cult of per­son­al­i­ty is becom­ing increas­ing­ly preva­lent in the media. Pro­pa­gan­dist Ihar Tur posits that a robust gov­ern­ment should be irre­mov­able, argu­ing that this is the surest guar­an­tee of peace and pros­per­i­ty for the state.

Crit­i­cal (or insult­ing) remarks about the West are part of any giv­en pro­gram. The USA and the Col­lec­tive West are accused of ini­ti­at­ing the con­flict in Ukraine and of hav­ing a vest­ed inter­est in the war. In the mean­time, there is a notable absence of news items about the ongo­ing devel­op­ments on the Ukrain­ian front.

1. Belarus 1 evening news mon­i­tor­ing results

The mon­i­tor­ing over­all impres­sion is one of a com­plete lack of dynam­ics and plot. In a strict sense, any day could have been select­ed for the issuance of the spe­cif­ic news release. The sys­tem recre­ates a stag­na­tion per­spec­tive where every­thing just goes in cir­cles. The pres­i­dent always gives slaps to the same scrap­py ser­vants, the ser­vants are always a bit slow and stu­pid, Big Broth­er is always open and benev­o­lent, and the peo­ple are always hap­py and wel­come the peace-lov­ing pol­i­cy. The NATO alliance is clank­ing tracks close to our bor­ders, the West’s work­ers are always on strike against the rul­ing elites who are on US retain­er, and Belaru­sian ath­letes are always com­pet­ing — in a broth­er­ly man­ner — against their east­ern neigh­bors.

If there’s a marked decrease in agi­ta­tion and mil­i­tant con­fronta­tion, that’s what can be con­sid­ered con­ven­tion­al­ly new. The pre­vi­ous dis­play of ner­vous exas­per­a­tion has been replaced by a more sub­dued and monot­o­nous tone of voice, accom­pa­nied by the occa­sion­al small-talk remark in the style of “Well, yes, of course, who would doubt it?” Fur­ther­more, the efforts of the anchors (pri­mar­i­ly Siarhei Luhavoy) to occa­sion­al­ly “spice up” the voic­ing of the agen­da appear to be mis­guid­ed attempts at impro­vi­sa­tion that are poor­ly aligned with the core mes­sages.

The removal of the key author’s sto­ries by the old-school “infor­ma­tion war­riors” from the main news block reflects a gen­er­al change in dis­po­si­tion. It is no longer nec­es­sary to attack the ene­my. The threat is defeat­ed, the purge is com­plete, and order is restored. What’s left is to guard sta­bil­i­ty and hold the west­ern bor­der.

There’s no room for grow­ing. There’s no need to change. There is no way out of our out­post.

But sta­bil­i­ty does not explain the gam­bling repres­sion. So one needs an exter­nal threat.

How­ev­er, there is a prob­lem with “war­mon­gers”. There is a fatal lack of fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion besmirch­ing the ene­my. It seems like one has to appoint ran­dom Ukraini­ans as “sabo­teurs” and uncov­er anony­mous plans of an anony­mous ene­my at the behest of anony­mous spe­cial ser­vices. Bor­ing and ridicu­lous. We have heard this before.

The world order froze as a still pic­ture. In this con­text, for­eign coun­tries are viewed as a satir­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an endur­ing class con­flict and a malev­o­lent bour­geoisie, while Rus­sia is a lim­it­less field of coop­er­a­tion. And noth­ing will ever change in that arrange­ment.

In this con­cep­tu­al frame­work, the over­ar­ch­ing nar­ra­tive is shaped by those in posi­tions of author­i­ty. Cul­ture is an ide­o­logue and an enter­tain­er. There is vir­tu­al­ly no crime. There are no protests or arrests in sight. Penance is no longer a pri­or­i­ty. No polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. Even a mod­est sales van in a remote vil­lage is filled to capac­i­ty with cus­tomers’ excite­ment. The war in Ukraine is hard­ly vis­i­ble at all. It’s all a blur. There are some pret­ty strange char­ac­ters in the mix, folks who’ve been involved in scan­dals and embez­zle­ment, those on US retain­er. They have the audac­i­ty to export their grain to Europe. They are scar­ing Euro­pean farm­ers. It seems they don’t real­ize that they have to nego­ti­ate with Rus­sia. It’s not entire­ly clear what the nego­ti­a­tion should be about.

Moti­va­tion and cause and effect aren’t a big part of the news pic­ture these days. The episodes are pret­ty straight­for­ward — they just skim the sur­face of what’s going on and present a desir­able per­spec­tive from the offi­cial point of view.  They basi­cal­ly just repeat them­selves.

This leads to an emo­tion­al addic­tion rather than knowl­edge. An addic­tion to the seem­ing­ly obvi­ous. How do you chal­lenge the obvi­ous?

It’s a nat­ur­al seman­tic land­scape. The sky is blue. The poet is Pushkin. The sea is around the Crimea. The space is asso­ci­at­ed with the Baikonur Cos­mod­rome. What’s wrong with that?

There­fore, in exam­in­ing the role of Russ­ian influ­ence in Belaru­sian infor­ma­tion flows, it becomes evi­dent that it is not the direct dis­sem­i­na­tion of Russ­ian news that is of pri­ma­ry con­cern, but rather the indi­rect “soft” prop­a­ga­tion of a dom­i­nant, impe­r­i­al nar­ra­tive. And this indi­rect influ­ence is of par­tic­u­lar strate­gic impor­tance. An alien optics that con­sumed you.

And you don’t even have to say “Putin.” It is suf­fi­cient to watch Russ­ian TV series, express sup­port for Belaru­sians at the Russ­ian Spar­taki­ad, con­sid­er Ukraini­ans to be Nazis, con­cert­ed­ly resent sanc­tions and have TV pre­sen­ters speak Belaru­sian once a year and on cer­tain occa­sions, for instance, on Moth­er Tongue Day.

There is a dis­crep­an­cy between the pub­lic stance of the author­i­ties and the actu­al cul­tur­al and infor­ma­tion­al frame­work. The notion­al­ly inde­pen­dent state of Belarus oper­ates in a man­ner that is con­sis­tent with that of a con­stituent of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, the pri­ma­ry impact of the “Russ­ian link” is cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied as the absence of the Belaru­sian mean­ing-form­ing con­tent.

To put it anoth­er way, it is not our respon­si­bil­i­ty to fill the upper floors of the pyra­mid of mean­ings. Fur­ther­more, the issue is not mere­ly the dis­place­ment of “Belaru­sian­ness” by for­eign con­tent. It is the for­ma­tion of a hybrid iden­ti­ty of a qua­si-colo­nial type. The lack of depth in the Belaru­sian con­tent con­sumers’ con­scious­ness is filled by the influ­ence of Moscow-based con­cepts, cre­at­ing a Rus­si­a­cen­tric view of the world across var­i­ous domains, from tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion to Lukashenka’s “seri­ate” diplo­mat­ic strat­e­gy of fre­quent vis­its to Moscow. In addi­tion to the afore­men­tioned cen­tral pieces, the media streams are accom­pa­nied by local Belaru­sian trash, includ­ing rit­u­al sum­maries of shock work, pen­sion­er per­for­mances, and half-heart­ed “five min­utes of hate” stand-ups.

The absence of a local media prod­uct that is on par with the Russ­ian one has led to a per­cep­tion among the Belaru­sian audi­ence that it is a sec­ondary play­er and depen­dent in the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, and mil­i­tary spheres. The pub­lic begins to “think Moscow” sim­ply because of the lack of bright alter­na­tive sig­nals. Pompous “union-build­ing” turns into provin­cial sub­or­di­na­tion.

The con­tra­dic­tion is that even if the num­ber of Russ­ian sto­ries in the news broad­cast­ing grid is reduced, the state media will not become more Belaru­sian. They just go to the ground floor of the “union” infor­ma­tion work, which basi­cal­ly makes them a work­ing-class mul­ti-cir­cu­la­tion news­pa­per, just spout­ing triv­ia and non­sense.

1. STV evening news mon­i­tor­ing results

There was a notable absence of Russ­ian-relat­ed news items. In most cas­es, they were lim­it­ed to mat­ters per­tain­ing to the econ­o­my. Con­cur­rent­ly, numer­ous mate­ri­als exhib­it­ed pro-Russ­ian (pro-Krem­lin) nar­ra­tives. The pri­ma­ry focus was on the sub­jects of war, the stance towards Ukraine, and the rela­tion­ship with West­ern coun­tries. The dis­cus­sion of sen­si­tive or con­tro­ver­sial top­ics was effec­tive­ly sti­fled. For instance, the process of Pol­o­niza­tion has been iden­ti­fied as the pri­ma­ry obsta­cle to the advance­ment of the Belaru­sian lan­guage. In con­trast, Rus­sian­iza­tion has been large­ly over­looked despite its detri­men­tal impact on the lan­guage.

The news media por­trayed West­ern coun­tries as hav­ing been degrad­ed and exhaust­ed as a result of their sup­port for Ukraine. There were also com­plete­ly absurd state­ments. For instance, the French were alleged­ly com­pelled to col­lect rain­wa­ter due to their inabil­i­ty to ful­fill their util­i­ty bill oblig­a­tions. Con­cur­rent­ly, the cit­i­zens of Euro­pean coun­tries (ordi­nary peo­ple) knew they were being fooled and began to oppose their gov­ern­ments, which result­ed in the emer­gence of inter­nal con­flicts in numer­ous loca­tions. The state pro­pa­gan­da appa­ra­tus devot­ed a great deal of atten­tion to the cov­er­age of con­flicts in Poland, intend­ing to demon­strate anti-Ukrain­ian sen­ti­ment among local farm­ers.

It is impor­tant to high­light that the STV chan­nel has been delib­er­ate­ly omit­ting the cru­cial facts regard­ing the com­plic­i­ty of the Belaru­sian regime in the war against Ukraine. Instead, it has been por­tray­ing the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment as a peace-lov­ing coun­try that does not engage in mil­i­tary con­flicts. This por­tray­al is stark­ly con­trast­ed with the depic­tion of West­ern coun­tries, which are accused of seek­ing to weak­en Rus­sia and the so-called “Slav­ic trin­i­ty.”

The top­ic of elec­tions was cov­ered quite exten­sive­ly. The pri­ma­ry mes­sages con­veyed were that the elec­tions in Belarus were more demo­c­ra­t­ic than those held in the West, and that the major­i­ty of cit­i­zens sup­port the incum­bent author­i­ties.

The top­ic of the Great Patri­ot­ic War was inter­mit­tent­ly broached. An obvi­ous trend is the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Sovi­et past.

It is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy that the anchors and cor­re­spon­dents of the TV chan­nel dis­played a high lev­el of enthu­si­asm in their praise of the per­son­al­i­ty of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka. He was pre­sent­ed as an expe­ri­enced politi­cian who not only pre­served peace in Belarus, but also tried to pre­vent a new world war.