Euronews Won’t Broadcast In Belarus, Russian Pobeda Channel Will Replace It

“On April 12, 2021, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion exclud­ed the for­eign TV pro­gram Euronews from the list of for­eign media out­lets that received per­mis­sion to dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion in the Repub­lic of Belarus. The pre­vi­ous­ly issued per­mis­sion for dis­tri­b­u­tion on the ter­ri­to­ry of the Repub­lic of Belarus has expired,” the state­ment says.

RIA Novosti received a com­ment from a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion. Accord­ing to her, MART (Min­istry of Anti­mo­nop­oly Reg­u­la­tion and Trade) revealed vio­la­tions of the leg­is­la­tion of Belarus on adver­tis­ing at the TV chan­nel.

“In our law on adver­tis­ing, all adver­tise­ments that are broad­cast must be in Russ­ian or Belaru­sian. They do not trans­late their ads, they are in Eng­lish, this is a vio­la­tion of the leg­is­la­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus,” the agency’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive explained.

She also added that in Belarus a broad­cast per­mit is issued for three years, after which it must be obtained again. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the TV chan­nel sub­mit­ted doc­u­ments to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion to obtain a new per­mit “just a cou­ple of days before the end of the action.” It has not yet been giv­en due to the revealed vio­la­tions.

“Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the chan­nel were told that they need to be cor­rect­ed, after which anoth­er meet­ing of the com­mis­sion will take place, and then, if every­thing goes well, we will give them per­mis­sion again,” the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion added.

At the time of pub­li­ca­tion of the arti­cle, Euronews is still avail­able from some oper­a­tors. The chan­nel is still broad­cast on the Cos­mos Tele­com net­work, as well as in Voka from A1. The first to announce the ter­mi­na­tion of its broad­cast­ing was the users of the inter­ac­tive tele­vi­sion Zala from Bel­t­ele­com.

Euronews is a Euro­pean dai­ly round-the-clock news chan­nel that com­bines video chron­i­cles of world events and audio com­men­tary in thir­teen lan­guages. Found­ed on Jan­u­ary 1, 1993. Euronews’ cable, satel­lite and ter­res­tri­al broad­casts in 2009 cov­ered more than 294 mil­lion house­holds in 150 coun­tries (Europe, Africa, Asia, Aus­tralia, the Amer­i­c­as, and the Mid­dle East).

At the same time, a Russ­ian chan­nel Pobe­da will start broad­cast­ing in Belarus, the web­site of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion reports. This is a Russ­ian-made TV pro­gram about the Great Patri­ot­ic War. It was launched for the 75th anniver­sary of the Vic­to­ry by the First Chan­nel group. The chan­nel shows the clas­sics of the Sovi­et mil­i­tary cin­e­ma, Russ­ian films and TV series, doc­u­men­taries about the war.