Storylines of Belarusian State Television Channels 

During the first quarter of 2021, the main topics of social and political reporting and their affirmations in the Panorama and Glavniy efir (Main Air) television programs were as follows:

Coronavirus infection and vaccination

• Western vaccines are of questionable quality.
• The health systems of the EU and the U.S. are not able to save people from the consequences of the pandemic.
• During the pandemic, the big players began to divide the world.
• Belarus can serve as an example of anti-epidemic strategy for other countries.

Situation in the U.S.: «lawlessness and chaos»

• The U.S. is no longer a stronghold of democracy. There are serious questions about election fraud. Justice is on the side of Donald Trump, who is being discriminated against.
• Americans do not support Joe Biden, who has declining cognitive abilities.
• In the U.S. there is digital totalitarianism, lawlessness, and violence. People who wanted fair elections are dying.
• In the U.S. events took place that Americans created in other countries.
• In the U.S. there is a threat of martial law.

All-Belarusian People’s Assembly

• The People’s Assembly is a fateful event for the country.
• All issues should be discussed not on the street or on squares, but within the forum of the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly where thousands of people gather.
• The Assembly delegates are ready to work despite the threats they and their family members receive from political opponents.
• The immoral actions of the opposition to discredit the People’s Assembly.

Discrediting Belarusian political opponents and the protest movement in Belarus

• The protests in Belarus are not peaceful. This is a bacchanalia and hysteria that interferes with the life of normal people.
• The same looting that is taking place in Belarus is happening in the U.S., but the American events are named differently.
• The Belarusian protests are funded from abroad. The «runaways» are fighting over money and the «overseas coordinators» are getting richer.
• The opposition needs chaos on the streets because it is making money.
• People under the white-red-white flag during the war committed atrocities and exterminated Jews.
• Most of the protesters are unemployed people who are bored and have nothing to do. There are also many alcoholics and convicts among them.
• Fake news, video stitching, and sabotage have become part of a large-scale destructive information strategy.
• Many law enforcement officers were injured during the protests. Teachers, security officials, and journalists received many threats and were harassed.

The situation in Ukraine

• The experience of Ukraine includes the deplorable consequences of revolutions, brain drain, and the conflict in the Donbass.
• Vaccination outrage is characterized by a failed campaign and vaccine smuggling.
• The empty illusion that the West will help Ukraine.
• The deterioration of the socio-economic situation. With Russia everything was much better for Ukraine and now the population has been reduced to poverty.
• Usurpation of power in Ukraine. In «European» and «pro-democratic» Ukraine, neo-Nazis persecute journalists, judges, and deputies, threatening to kill them.
• Strategic management of Ukraine comes from abroad.

Relationship between Belarus and Russia

• Belarus and Russia are committed to close economic integration. Alexander Lukashenko: «We are determined to create an association that would do right.»
• Russia as a strategic ally is extremely important for Belarus.
• Preparation of Russian joint military exercises Zapad-2021.
• An information war has been unleashed against Belarus and Russia.

External attacks on Belarus and extremist activities

• A belt of instability is being deliberately created from the post-Soviet states.
• In Western countries, the whitewashing of Nazism and fascism is underway. War in Europe is talked about as inevitable.
• Officials in the West will not calm down. They are trying to disrupt peaceful life in Belarus. Western forces were planning a conspiracy to seize state power and calling for action to undermine national security.
• Terrorist attacks were planned in Belarus. Avtukhovich’s criminal group planned to kill people, and it was not the only one.
• Dirty technologies were used, putting pressure on sports.
• A civil war could start in Belarus.
• Warsaw is preparing to pollinate Belarusian lands, distorting the historical truth while imposing its own version of history on Belarusian children.
• Belarus is undeservedly undergoing pressure from sanctions. It is all a game and a struggle for markets.
• A symmetrical response is needed in response to Western sanctions.

Moral and socio-economic decline of the West

• There is no freedom of speech in the West, as many journalists have been killed and injured there.
• Western police behave extremely aggressively towards protesters, in contrast to Belarus and Russia.
• The economies of the EU and the U.S. are in decline. Riots are taking place throughout Europe and the U.S.
• The Baltic countries are sympathetic to the glorification of Nazism.
• There are hungry queues for food in the EU.
• Health care has collapsed in Western countries. Protests in Russia.
• The protests are actively coordinated by foreign embassies. The setting up of protests is the same as in Belarus.
• The brutality of the riot police at protests is fake.

During the first quarter of 2021, the main topics of social and political reporting and their affirmations on the Kontury television program were the following:

Coronavirus pandemic and vaccinations

• The unsuccessful fight against the epidemic in Western countries and Ukraine and the success of Belarus in countering the epidemic and in the production of vaccines. («Belmedpreparaty is the only one in the post-Soviet space that was ready to produce their own Sputnik according to the Russian formula.»)
• Corruption scandals in foreign countries related to the supply of vaccines.
• In 2020, Europe almost split up while distributing finances for the fight against coronavirus, and now they cannot share the vaccine.
• Poor quality of Western vaccines compared to Russian vaccines. Sputnik V is the only vaccine with proven efficacy. Belarus managed to establish its own vaccine production, despite interference in its internal affairs.
• Belarus manages to contain the virus without introducing quarantine measures and there are enough hospital beds and ventilators.

External attacks on Belarus and extremist activities

• Belarus was subjected to a brutal attack from the outside; an attempt was made to revolt using a «blitzkrieg» principle. An information war is being waged against Belarus.
• Poland is aggravating relations with Belarus. It is organizing provocations and finances the destabilization of Belarus. The U.S. is using Poland to put pressure on Belarus.
• Major geopolitical players are preparing for a protracted confrontation and there is a continual buildup of NATO’s armed contingent in Poland and Lithuania.
• Belarusian special services are preventing threats of terrorist attacks and provocations during protests. The KGB thwarted the actions of a group that was planning to blow things up and kill.
• Radicalization of protesters. They carry knives, axes, gas pistols, and cartridges with them. Some of the protesters are anarchists who are used to provoke law enforcement agencies to respond harshly.
• The Ministry of Internal Affairs is checking non-governmental organizations that, under the guise of human rights activities, were engaged in the financial support of protests and riots.
• The fact that the scenarios are identical will shake up the socio-political situation in Belarus followed by Russia. The same forces are behind them.

Western sanctions

• Western sanctions do not work. They harm Lithuania and Ukraine, who introduced them by order of key Western countries.
• Sanctions are a war. They hit people and the country. The U.S. sanctions are particularly cynical given their electoral irregularities.

Protests in western countries

• The Belarusian protests were as violent and undemocratic as the storming of the Capitol. («The fault lies not only with Trump but with all American politics, whose electoral system has once again shown its inferiority.»)
• The socio-political destabilization in the U.S. and the undemocratic removal of Donald Trump.
• Protests in Poland and other Western countries against quarantine measures; protests are taking place in almost all Western countries. Europeans smash shop windows and many have nothing to lose. In Europe, people line up for free food.

Protests in Russia

• The protest events in Russia, organized externally, have failed.
• The Belarusian protests were a rehearsal by the West before organizing Russian protests. Belarus is a springboard for the West’s attack against Russia.
• Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Yulia Navalnaya are the same type. A quote from publicist Nikolai Starikov: «Navalny’s coordinators want to kill him in order to escalate the situation to the limit and so that the people would start following Yulia Navalnaya.»
• Telegram is also used in Russian protests. In general, social media has an increasingly destructive impact on societies.
• The West condemns the measures of the Russian police while harshly suppressing protests at home.

The situation in Ukraine

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy is threatened with impeachment. His rule is slipping into dictatorship and censorship. People understand that a «puppet» has come to power. Ukraine is ruled by foreign coordinators and is a colony without freedom or independence.
• Maidan began peacefully, and then turned into bloodshed. The massacre of undesirables continues.
• The difficult epidemiological and socio-economic situation. («Everything that is happening now in the housing and utilities sector, the Ukrainians call tariff genocide. They are nostalgic for the past.»)
• Geopolitics turned out to be more important for Ukraine than people’s lives as authorities refused to buy the Sputnik V vaccine.

Discrediting Belarusian political opponents and the protest movement

• Disunity in the headquarters of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and its puppet status relative to Western countries. Franak Viachorka and Pavel Latushka are under the full influence of Poland.
• An informal hearing on Belarus in the UN Security Council did not decide anything.
• Stepan Putilo’s Telegram channel and others are deceitful and hypocritical.
• The opposition is arguing over money and the «runaways» are sitting on cash flows in Lithuania and Poland. Unemployed opposition members have purchased apartments.
• Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has no support among Belarusians. Belarusian youth have come to their senses and realized the futility of the protests. The protests have dried up in Belarus. The «Warsaw coordinators» are creating the appearance of protests on the internet.
• On the part of the opposition, there was no constructive criticism of the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly – there was only populism. «Gather up your Assembly in the kitchen on its knees with Tsikhanouskaya.»
• Law enforcement officers left the service because they could not stand the load or wanted to contribute to the «hype.»

Relationship between Belarus and Russia

• Russia remains Belarus’s closest ally. Russia and Belarus have a common enemy, so integration needs to be deepened.
• Calls to break off relations with Russia will lead to the vulnerability of Minsk’s positions on foreign policy issues. Alexander Lukashenko: «As long as we stand shoulder to shoulder with Russia, no one will put us on our knees or break us.»
• Attempts are underway to isolate Belarus from Russia. Moscow understands that only in a strong bond, under the protection of the borders of the Union State, can it cope with the increased pressure.
• Putin and Lukashenko are close, equal friends and partners.

During the first quarter of 2021, the main topics of social and political reporting and their affirmations in the television program Nedelya (The Week) were the following:

Coronavirus infection and vaccinations

• A vaccine war is unfolding in Western countries.
• The quarantine has led to the decline of the economies of Europe and the U.S. and social degradation.
• Sputnik V vaccines are highly effective.

Friendly relations between Belarus and Russia

• Allied Russia remains a strategic partner of Belarus. Russia will not leave Belarus in trouble. Rapprochement of the defense departments of Belarus and Russia.
• Friendly relations between Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin.
• Integration of the Belarusian and Russian economies reaches a new level.

Protests in Russia. The West is attacking Russia through Belarus

• Similarity of scenarios of protests in Belarus and Russia.
• Children at protests were run by American organizers via TikTok.
• The West is interested in the Yugoslav scenario for Russia.
• Western forces hit Belarus but aimed at Russia.

External attacks on Belarus and extremist activities

• Belarus is under unprecedented pressure from abroad. Belarusian protests take the form of a political requisition.
• The white-red-white flag is popularized by external coordinators. Alexander Lukashenko: «The leading role in organizing street riots is played by foreign puppeteers and their henchmen-collaborators who have failed to demonstrate their political significance in any other way. We have already seen such people in German newsreels, enthusiastically marching with white-red-white flags and portraits of the Fuhrer.»
• An impending terrorist attack was prevented with a cache of TNT and explosives found.
• The Poles have recalled the borders of 1939 and are showing territorial appetites for Belarus.
• The intervention in Belarus was prepared from the territory of Poland and Lithuania.
• The sanctions are absurd and work to the detriment of the Western countries themselves.
• Belarus needs to build such a relationship with Russia so as not to be afraid of Western sanctions.

Decline of the West

• American democracy is fading away and Americans believe their country is on the wrong course.
• Freedom of speech and press in the West is a concept of a bygone era.
• Poland, Sweden, and the Baltic countries support the U.S. due to the lack of their own point of view.

The situation in Ukraine

• The EU is destroying Ukrainian industry.
• The events of 2014-2021 led to many broken lives, mass migration, and the economic backwardness of Ukraine for decades.

Discrediting Belarusian political opponents and the protest movement in Belarus

• Former diplomats and cultural figures changed sides.
• If the opposition came to power, Belarus would disappear.
• 76% of Belarusians have a negative attitude towards protests.