Who is waging an information war against the Belarusian army and why?
On July 24, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko signed the Law “On Amendments to Laws on the Effective Functioning of the State’s Military Organization.” The main novelty of this legal act is the provision that the deferment for obtaining education can be used only once.
This approach causes discontent among a certain part of society, where the network sets the tone,” the so-called. “independent” and “non-governmental” information resources, closely affiliated with governmental and non-profit structures of NATO countries.
Why are they changing the draft rules in Belarus?
It must be recognized that a number of adopted changes are not indisputable and there is indeed some ground for criticism. For example, the question arises about the advisability of extending the provisions of the new law to undergraduates and graduate students, especially in technical specialties, given that in Belarus there is an established practice of serving in the reserve, when persons liable for military service are called up to serve for a limited period over several years without a long break from their main job. activities. In addition, the issues of including military service in the insurance period have not yet been agreed upon, and in general, measures to stimulate conscripts and provide them with preferences in comparison with draft dodgers have not been sufficiently developed.
At the same time, the developers of the Law indicate that the number of grounds for deferments in Belarus (76 categories) is already the largest in the post-Soviet space, and the need for increased attention to the army is due to “the goals of maintaining the constant combat readiness of the Armed Forces in the context of intensified military activity in the world and Europe." It is expected that thanks to the new rules, up to three thousand additional recruits will be drafted into the Belarusian army in the fall of 2019, which is especially important, since at the present stage the Armed Forces are faced with problems of quantitative and qualitative recruitment of personnel.
Simply put, in the context of the militarization of NATO border countries and adjacent Ukraine, the Belarusian leadership decided to intensify military policy and increase attention to defense issues. In addition, and this should not be forgotten, the Belarusian army also performs tasks to protect the western borders of the allied Russia, which has been worked out in the corresponding Military doctrine of the Union State. It was from the calculation of these tasks that the General Staff at one time determined the optimal size of the Belarusian army and military-trained reserve, which must be strictly adhered to. Therefore, the new law was promptly adopted by Parliament and signed by the Head of State without hesitation, since we are talking about paramount security issues.
Technologies and goals of discrediting the army.
At the same time, it seems that the story around the “law on deferments” is far from over, since the above-mentioned “network” will take measures to complicate its implementation, corrupt youth and disrupt conscription activities. In this regard, it is necessary to emphasize that discrediting the army, along with inciting sentiments of Russophobia, ridiculing the Belarusian state model, compromising law enforcement agencies and patriotic forces, is one of the cornerstones of the editorial policy of this “network,” which was especially noticeable after the start of the Ukrainian conflict. In practice, it turns out that NATO border countries, especially Poland, are building up military power, and the media owned by them, where the main violin is played by the American Radio Liberty and the Polish-British TV channel Belsat, at the same time are waging a constant information war against the Armed Forces of Belarus.
Moreover, the “exacerbations” strikingly coincide with Russian-Belarusian military exercises or conscription campaigns, when “news” about the horrors of the Belarusian army or spy novels on the topic of “Russian occupation” are churned out almost daily.
According to the classics of disinformation, outright lies (for example, about the fact that in the army soldiers “paint the grass” or “clean toilets with toothbrushes”) are mixed with real negative facts (cases of suicide, arbitrariness, hazing), which are given a deliberately garish character. That is, by promoting isolated precedents, the goal of intimidating the population is achieved, when the most susceptible part of society begins to view military service as a “deadly dangerous occupation.”
The fact that the number of suicides in the Armed Forces of Belarus is significantly lower than in the armies of neighboring countries, and the mortality rate of persons aged 18-27 per 100 people is many times higher “in civilian life” than “in boots”, is not taken into account. After all, the main goal of such information manipulations is to form a false picture of the world, when the propagated population ceases to distinguish “us” from “strangers”, ignores real facts and is guided by false guidelines. It must be said that the level of aggressiveness of these “independent media” is increasing in parallel with the process of militarization of the Baltic region, budgets, quality and quantity of materials, forms and methods of conveying information are increasing.
At the same time, in addition to traditional tools in the form of TV channels and Internet sites, the social networks YouTube and Telegram are also actively used, where the number of subscribers of the corresponding sources is in the range of 100 - 200 thousand. The relative ease of use and the virtual invulnerability of centers for the dissemination of destructive information due to their location outside Belarus allow us to predict that information and psychological operations will become the main pain point of the Belarusian military department in the coming years, especially in light of plans to deploy elements of the American missile defense system in Poland and the Baltic countries .
What to do?
As mentioned above, we are talking about a danger not only for Belarus, therefore it is advisable for Moscow and Minsk to work out their own propaganda and counter-propaganda measures and supplement the draft joint Military Doctrine with aspects of information security.
Of course, Russian experience in this regard will be very useful for Belarus, since the Russian Armed Forces faced enemy information attacks during the counter-terrorism operation in the Chechen Republic, during the “five-day war” of 2008 in Georgia, as well as during the operation in Syria. By the way, it is the Syrian operation and its successful outcome for Russia, not only in the military, but also in the information and political dimension, that indicates that the Russian Defense Ministry managed to establish competent information work of the relevant services, as well as interaction with civilian journalists, bloggers, and public organizations.
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