Svetlana Alexievich explains her scandalous statement about Catholics

Svetlana Alexievich has explained what she meant when she said that ‘Catholics would kill anyone including Orthodox Christians’.  She said it on the Russian TV channel Dozhd on June 9. The statement caused a stir. Head of the Belarusian Catholic Church Tadeush Kondrusevich also commented on it. “Being a public person, it is necessary to remember about responsibility for your words,” he told the Nobel Prize laureate.

The words were a metaphor, Alexievich told tut.by.

"When I was asked about Ukraine I said that Crimea was occupied and the war in Donets Basin had been started by Putin. Such a war can begin anywhere. You can send tanks, a couple of armored vehicles with soldiers and you can always find lamebrains somewhere. It can be done in Belarus too, you can make Catholics wage war on Orthodoxy Christians. I should have said that Orthodox Christians could wage war on Catholics and that Orthodox Christians were killing Orthodox Christians in Ukraine. I was not talking about Catholics or war in Belarus. I do not understand how they could read it in their own way. It was a metaphor, I did not mean that Catholics would wage war on Orthodox Christians,” the writer explained.