CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
PREFACE
I. BELARUS AND THE “UNION STATE”
- Presidential election-2025
- Creation of new propaganda media before the election
- Western sanctions
II. BELARUS’ DEMOCRATIC FORCES
- Anniversary of the 2020 protests
- Threats and repression
- Pardon of political prisoners
III. UKRAINE
- Contradictions in anti-Ukrainian propaganda narratives
- New “peaceful” statements
- Kursk operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces
- Russian drones in Belarus’ airspace
IV. THE “COLLECTIVE WEST”
- Contradictions in anti-Western rhetoric
- Poland and the Baltic states
- Nuclear threats
- Manipulation through the migration crisis
- Cancellation of Belarusian visas for citizens of European countries
- The U.S. presidential election
CONCLUSION
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In the third quarter of 2024 (July-September), the following narratives prevailed in Belarusian propaganda and in Russian propaganda aimed at Belarus:
- BELARUS
- The upcoming presidential election, scheduled for January 2025, has a growing influence on the content and agenda of state media and Telegram channels. There are election campaigns in support of Aliaksandr Lukashenka in the country with a complete absence of campaigns of alternative candidates (as well as alternative candidates themselves).
- Ahead of the election, Lukashenka’s image continues to be strengthened as the only and no-alternative candidate and the “father of the nation”, whom “the core of the population” asks “on its knees” to remain in the post of president “forever”.
- State holidays and commemorative dates, including those unrelated to Lukashenka’s stay in power, such as the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Minsk from the German occupants, are used as an occasion for campaigning for him. In August, a new flow of praise for Lukashenka was connected with his 70th birthday.
- NEW PROPAGANDA MEDIA
- Ahead of the election, the role of propaganda is increasing. New propaganda media are being launched to cover the population more widely. At the end of August, the “Belarusian killer of YouTube” – the first domestic video hosting and a new TV channel – were presented to the public. Lukashenka urged to “propagate only the Belarusian truth on it.”
- Pro-government commentators responded to the arrest of founder of Telegram and media manager Pavel Durov in France with calls to create their Belarusian analogues instead of Western popular social platforms.
- BELARUS’ DEMOCRATIC FORCES
- August marked the fourth anniversary of the brutal suppression of the 2020 peaceful protests. The Lukashenka regime still considers the democratic forces its main enemy, which is evident from the degree of aggressive hate speech towards “those who left” in state media.
- Propaganda demands tougher legislation and continued repression of political emigrants and threatens them with all sorts of punishments, even physical extermination.
- On the fourth anniversary of the protests, the European Union issued a statement condemning the regime’s crimes against its own people and calling for the immediate release of all political prisoners.
- In August and September, Lukashenka pardoned several groups of political prisoners by decree. The propaganda did not conceal that this was done in the hope of easing and lifting Western sanctions. The pardon of political prisoners gave a new reason for propagandists to praise Lukashenka for his “generosity” and “humanism.”
- Likewise, the Belarusian media used the case of German citizen Rico Krieger, who was sentenced to death but then pardoned by Lukashenka. Krieger became a participant of a large-scale exchange of spies and political prisoners between Russia and Belarus on the one side and Western countries on the other. The propaganda needed this picture to try to present Belarus as a “negotiable” country and to influence the easing of the sanctions regime.
- For the first time, Lukashenka publicly expressed concern about the “brain drain” abroad, thereby actually recognizing the problem of the fact that dissidents, most of whom are representatives of the most intellectual strata of society, are leaving Belarus.
- WAR IN UKRAINE
- The previously noted slight decrease in the level of hostility of anti-Ukrainian rhetoric of Belarusian propagandists continues. The aggressive, defamatory tone is gradually replaced by softening and even friendly statements towards Ukrainians, calls for peace negotiations and for “crisis settlement,” which is absolutely impossible to imagine in the Russian propaganda. The main tone here is set, first of all, by Aliaksandr Lukashenka himself.
- In a big interview with Russia’s Rossiya 1 TV channel, Lukashenka said that “neither Russians, nor Ukrainians, nor Belarusians need this war” and called for “ending this fight.”
- At a meeting in Minsk with the head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, Lukashenka said that Belarus was ready to cooperate with Ukraine “on the same principles as with the DPR.”
- In July, Lukashenka’s mass media used the situation of a sudden increase in tension on the Belarus-Ukraine border to their benefit. It was announced that Belarusian troops were brought to full combat readiness, but after a while the “president” canceled this decision: “De-escalation – Lukashenka promised and fulfilled.”
- The unexpected operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Russia’s Kursk region, which has been ongoing since early August, initially caused confusion in the ranks of propagandists of the “Union State.” Later, narratives began to spread that it was “an attempt to prove that Ukraine can still do something” in order to “get more money from Western sponsors.”
- The propaganda cannot hide, but neither can it critically comment on the numerous cases of Russian military drones flying in and crashing on the territory of Belarus, launched to strike peaceful cities in Ukraine and accidentally going off course. Lukashenka has actually admitted that the drones are Russian.
- THE “COLLECTIVE WEST”
- Anti-Western propaganda in Belarus, as in the case of Ukraine, remains contradictory. Extremely hostile rhetoric full of threats (including nuclear weapons), insults, fakes and manipulation alternates with calls to resume “business as usual” and return to friendly relations.
- Belarus’ closest western neighbors – Poland and the Baltic states – remain the main targets of threats and defamation for their consistent and tough stance towards the Lukashenka regime.
- In September, there was a burst of anti-Polish statements in the Belarusian mass media due to the so-called “National Unity Day” (September 17).
- Propaganda actively instrumentalizes the migration crisis at the borders of Belarus and the European Union.
- The presidential election in the U.S. scheduled for November 2024 has an increasing impact on the content of the information agenda of Lukashenka’s mass media. In general, there is an opinion in the propaganda environment that none of the candidates, if they win the election, will be able to influence the improvement of the U.S. relations with Belarus and Russia, as well as that the EU member states will not change their “anti-Belarus policy” because they remain “puppets of the United States.”
- WESTERN SANCTIONS
- Despite the bravura statements that the sanctions are “useless” and even, on the contrary, stimulate the economy of Belarus, the propaganda continues to complain about them, calling them a “hybrid war” of the West against Belarus, and insist on their lifting. In order to ease the sanctions, the regime is ready to make various concessions, in particular, to release political prisoners.
- In August, the EU included a new group of Belarusian propagandists in the sanctions list. Lithuania sent materials against Aliaksandr Lukashenka to the International Criminal Court and a request to the administration of YouTube to block accounts of Belarusian propaganda channels on its territory. YouTube agreed. The democratic forces seek a complete ban of Belarusian media channels on YouTube.
PREFACE
The words in the title reflect the growing concern in the pro-government information environment of Belarus ahead of the upcoming presidential election. Undoubtedly, if four years ago Belarus had not been shaken by mass protests against the rigged results of the previous election, because of which the Belarusian regime was literally “hanging by a thread” for some time, there would not be desperate appeals to self-humiliation and adulation like this one now.
In this cry of propagandist Ryhor Azaronak, there is a paranoid fear of responsibility for his crimes against his own people, of new unrest, protests and any fluctuation of the ground under his feet. A repeat of 2020 is Lukashenka’s worst nightmare. The political regime wants to hold the upcoming election “clean and smooth,” and the propaganda is ready to build a “cult of the chief,” to humiliate themselves and kneel before him, as long as everything remains as it is.
In our review, we note an increase in the number of such statements. Propagandists use any official occasion, such as the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Minsk from the Germans in 1944, to spew another stream of flattery and gratitude to Lukashenka.
Most of all, pro-government journalists thank him for “preserving peace.” At the same time, they do not want to recognize that Lukashenka actually entered the war against Ukraine by providing the Russian army in February 2022 with its military infrastructure and territory from which it invaded Ukraine and from where it launched missiles on Ukrainian cities, making Belarus an accomplice in the military aggression and crimes of Putin’s regime.
And now the war is gradually coming back as a boomerang to Belarus: attack military drones launched by Russia to attack peaceful cities in Ukraine have started to appear and explode in its skies more and more often. At first, Belarusian propaganda claimed without any evidence that the drones were Ukrainian, but after the Russian origin of the drones was recognized by the supreme ruler himself, it became silent, not knowing what to say.
It was similar to another resonant event of this period – the unexpected and quick operation of the Ukrainian army on the territory of Russia, in Kursk region. The propaganda tried to ignore and “keep silent” about the successful offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as it did not fit into the general victorious rhetoric in the official media (on the principle of “either good or nothing is said about war”).
In any case, Lukashenka’s desire to end the war as soon as possible and to appear before the voters in the image of a “peacemaker” becomes the dominant factor influencing the agenda of the Belarusian media in the run-up to the election. While maintaining a generally hostile tone towards Ukraine and the West, there are more and more frequent calls for peace talks, for the establishment of relations, and demands for the lifting of sanctions and a return to “business as usual.”
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The report is also available in Russian.
