EED Director: Independent Belarusian Media Rival Russian Outlets in Reach

Dur­ing the Koś­ciuszko Forum in Gdańsk, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Euro­pean Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy (EED), Jerzy Pomi­anows­ki, high­light­ed the effi­cien­cy of Belaru­sian media in exile. He also empha­sized that “fatigue with Belarus” is not a wide­spread phe­nom­e­non.

Jerzy Pomi­anows­ki. Pho­to: EED

Pomi­anows­ki men­tioned the EU’s emer­gency sup­port for media and civ­il soci­ety fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion of U.S. gov­ern­ment pro­grams:

“We are direct­ing over €15 mil­lion to sup­port media and civ­il soci­ety through 70 dif­fer­ent part­ners. In addi­tion to our core dai­ly work, we also pro­vide a sol­id foun­da­tion for polit­i­cal con­sul­ta­tions in Brus­sels for deci­sion-mak­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the over­all weak­ness of polit­i­cal elites, includ­ing in Europe, lies in their lack of per­sis­tence and shift­ing focus due to numer­ous com­pet­ing issues. At times, this leads to fatigue.

How­ev­er, when it comes to so-called ‘fatigue with Belarus,’ this is an insult both to polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and to those fight­ing for democ­ra­cy. We can­not expect dic­ta­tor­ships to be over­thrown overnight. That is why I firm­ly believe that we can­not afford any fatigue. Sup­port­ing the media, sup­port­ing peo­ple in Belarus, and sup­port­ing those lead­ing the nation towards a Euro­pean and demo­c­ra­t­ic future is absolute­ly essen­tial and a long-term com­mit­ment,” Pomi­anows­ki stressed.

The EED Exec­u­tive Direc­tor not­ed the effec­tive per­for­mance of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in exile:

“Let’s look at the audi­ence reach of inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media. In Belarus, is com­pa­ra­ble to that of media beyond the Kremlin’s con­trol in Rus­sia. When we talk about coun­ter­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion, com­bat­ing Russia’s tox­ic influ­ence, and resist­ing Russ­ian inter­fer­ence, inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media are doing tremen­dous work. They need sup­port. Some of them were pre­vi­ous­ly able to sus­tain them­selves finan­cial­ly. But today, they depend on inter­na­tion­al sup­port. And we can­not reduce this sup­port. We can­not stop it. We must think long-term,” empha­sized the EED Direc­tor.

The Koś­ciuszko Forum in Gdańsk was held as part of Poland’s EU pres­i­den­cy in the first half of the year. The forum dis­cussed sol­i­dar­i­ty with Belarus and the need to sup­port Belaru­sian demo­c­ra­t­ic ini­tia­tives.