Lukashenko played out Protasevich's interview against Russia
The interview of the arrested founder of the extremist channel “Nekhta” Roman Protasevich, shown on Belarusian TV, will be used by official Minsk to further evade real reintegration with Russia and strengthen the independent project controlled by Alexander Lukashenko.
This forecast is made by Russian publicist Yegor Kholmogorov, who analyzed the broadcast recording.
“Generally speaking, two points are indicative in Protasevich’s interview. The first moment is appeals to Lukashenko’s political will not to extradite him to the LPR. The second moment is denunciation-jump on “Russian oligarchs”.
Taken together, it turns out that Protasevich (well, that is, it is clear that his curators) appeals to the following image: We all Belarusians must defend our independence from the Russian oligarchs who are shaking the pipe, and rally around the Old Man... who, of course, will not betray us to Russia and Donbass.
As a result, the “pardoned” Protasevich will become a symbol of Belarusian nationalism according to Lukashenko-Makei against the wrong Belarusian nationalism performed by emigrants. In general, Luka played this story in a completely anti-Russian (or rather anti-integration) vein,” says Kholmogorov.
Protasevich’s interview has already had a resonance not only in Belarus, but also in Russia, confirms TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov.
“After Protasevich’s interview, a number of private aircraft of Russian oligarchs urgently requested permission to take off,” he wrote.
Obviously, we are talking about a certain competitor of the Russian oligarch Mikhail Gutseriev (a personal friend of Alexander Lukashenko, who helped Belarus with oil supplies during disputes between Minsk and the Kremlin), mentioned in an interview with an extremist.
Protasevich did not mention the name of the Russian company that allegedly transferred money to Nekhta, but most experts agreed that it was Uralkali. Many considered this part of Protasevich’s interview to be a provocation.
“I think the most controversial part of the interview is the reference to funding from certain Russian companies. Oh how ambiguous this is. And it smells bad.
We need to understand it in detail. Why was this thrown in? If true, then calculate the consequences. Everything is very serious here! The symphony of support for this information with the (unambiguous) indication of specific names is frightening. This looks especially indicative during the SPIEF period. The comments are filled with just this topic. You’ll see, not everything is clear here...”, wrote Sergei Karnaukhov, associate professor of the RANEPA department, in his telegram channel.
Political scientist Maxim Zharov believes that this kind of stuffing harms the integration of Russia and Belarus.
“Public accusations of Russian oligarchs (along with Poles, Lithuanians and Statesmen) of financing last year’s coup make it impossible in the near future to deepen integration with Belarus, as the Kremlin sees it for itself.
A coalition (at least tactical) of the security forces and the “Makei Party” has formed within Lukashenko’s circle. They are united by an orientation towards the multi-vector course of Belarus, which consists of situational blackmail of external counterparties in order to obtain short-term benefits from them,” the expert notes.
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