Belarusian state TV channel claims US to blame for COVID19

Belarus President Aleksander Lukashenko appeared frustrated on Monday that his infamous advice to treat the COVID19 infection with tractor, vodka and sauna is being increasingly used by Russian TV channels in anti-Belarusian propaganda messaging for the audience inside Russia. 

"I would like to tell the Russians, those [Russian TV channels] who are talking nonsense about us, the following: you should not touch us. Why are you making fools of us for your domestic audience? Why are you brainwashing the Russian people that in the West those Belarusians are crazy? In this case, you cannot get away like you always do by saying those TV channels are not under state control,” Lukashenko said.

But Russian TV channels are not the only ones making use of the novel coronavirus pandemic to spread anti-Western propaganda. The Belarusian state television does just the same. Grigory Azaronak, a TV commentator with STV, the television channel controlled by the Minsk City administration, claimed in his program titled “Coronavirus: who is under mask…” that COVID19 is a biological weapon developed in the interests of the United States:

"The plan was that globalization would make the United States and the Western world the ultimate leader. However, it is China that has eventually won. What do you do when your chess game is lost? You turn the chessboard upside-down. In the past centuries, this was done with the help of global wars. Today, it is scarier because of nuclear weapons. So, they had to find another way to reformat the world order."

This TV product seems also for “domestic use” only. On YouTube, Azarenak’s program is not available for viewers in the United States, Western European countries or Ukraine. Why? STV’s Deputy General Director Kiril Kazakov had no answer to this question from Nasha Niva newspaper.

Euroradio’s take is that the video is geographically limited on YouTube to prevent the situation when US politicians will start asking Lukashenko why the Belarusian state television is making the Americans look like global criminals in the midst of the COVID19 crisis.

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