NTV: Lukashenka ‘blackmailing’ Russia (video)

The ‘unfair’ policy of the Belarusian authorities was discussed in the programme “Meeting Point” on NTV. The presenters kept insisting that Belarus ‘had blackmailed Russia’ for 25 years. “It irritates the Russian public”, they said. According to them, Belarus is an unreliable ally, which ‘is actively speculating on the Ukrainian conflict’.

Presenter Andrei Norkin: “The Belarusian authorities are behaving in a strange way. They are milking Russia by means of blackmail.”

Some of the experts present in the studio supported the thesis. “It is necessary to be strained in the relations with Belarus. This is another Ukraine and it will become clear very soon,” head of the International Relations Department at the Moscow University for the Humanities Nikolai Platoshkin said. The selection of books in Minsk bookshops has changed, he added. One can find books describing Belarus as the successor of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania and Belarusians as ‘a separate people’. “The expert” suggested that Lukashenka ‘should be looking at Libya, not Ukraine’...

One of the Tell the Truth leaders Andrei Dzmitryyeu from Belarus was present in the studio as a guest. He tried to explain that the development of Belarus-EU relations was not an obstacle to normal relations with Russia. However, the presenters reacted to his words in a very aggressive way and sometimes would not let him express his opinion.