Lukashenko is preparing Belarus for a complete purge of Russian TV channels

The information market of Belarus certainly cannot be called liberal. This is especially true for foreign media. The sale of literature published outside the republic and the presence of foreign media in Belarus are complicated by many administrative barriers.

The new version of the law “On the Mass Media” generally prohibited non-citizens of the Republic of Belarus from being founders of media outlets. The Information Security Concept adopted last year reinforced this state of affairs with the principle of “information sovereignty.”

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

As for television, there is no free market here in principle. Only those channels that are included in the relevant list of the Ministry of Information have access to the viewer. For broadcasting channels not included in the list, providers may face serious sanctions, including license revocation. And no Union State is a decree for this ministry. On the contrary, the Ministry of Information list includes, for example, Euronews, the Kazakh news channel “Khabar” and even the Ukrainian UA TV, but the “Russia 24” channel is not there, although its demand is clearly an order of magnitude higher than the Kazakh one.

There are no other federal socio-political channels in Belarus either. They were kicked off the air back in 2009. However, their substitutes appeared, registered to Belarusian companies, but made on the platform of the corresponding Russian channels - “ONT” - on the platform of “Pervy”, “STV” - on the platform of “REN-TV”. Everything is clear with the content of the RTR-Belarus and NTV-Belarus channels.

Thus, in the last 10 years, Belarusian television viewers have had access to Russian television channels, albeit adapted and partially emasculated. Now they risk losing this too.

After the failure at the negotiations in Sochi, President Lukashenko decided to purge the information space of Belarus from Russian influence. In his speech to the heads of the main state media, he directly set the task of moving away from foreign platforms. And in Belarus, all such foreign platforms on which Belarusian TV channels operate are Russian. It is against them that the new initiative is directed.

“Our space, our television, our TV, our ONT channel (and a good one). It's time to solve the main problem: it's ours. And if someone wants to come here, please, like us there. Pay money, ask permission, give your goods, product, we’ll see - maybe,” his telegram channel “Pul Pervogo” quotes Lukashenko. It’s just that he doesn’t finish the phrase “how do we get there” a little.

The fact is that the rules for accessing television networks in the two countries are very different. In Russia, no one has to ask permission and no one decides whether to let the channel reach the viewer or not. Everything is decided by the market and the specific provider. And the Belarus 24 channel is present in Russia, although it is not in great demand.

The fight of the Belarusian authorities against “manipulated facts, fakes, deepfakes and the so-called post-truth” goes too far and deprives citizens of the opportunity to receive information from a close country, which, moreover, officially continues to be considered an ally. What's next? Blocking social networks and imprisoning unwanted journalists, like in Ukraine?

In the meantime, by purging television, the Belarusian government is shooting itself in the foot. Russian channels have always been and remain an important part of the information and cultural space of Belarus. And local content cannot compete with it due to its low budget and bureaucratic nature. A television, even monopolized by local service experts and presenters, will inevitably lose to a refrigerator that is emptying during a crisis.

And Russian content is not going anywhere - Igor Marzalyuk and Gennady Davydko will never receive the same audience in Belarus as Vladimir Solovyov. It’s just that Solovyov will now be watched on YouTube. In a country where Internet users make up 81 percent of the population, this has long been no problem.