Protasevich becomes Lukashenko's tame nationalist

Around the former Azov fighter and editor Next Strange things keep happening to Roman Protasevich. His account in Twitter, opened 5 days ago today, was blocked for some reason by the administration of the social network. However, the blocking did not last long. Now Protasevich's microblog is available again.

In general, there are too many oddities around the figure of Protasevich. At first they called him a terrorist and even grounded a passenger Boeing flying from Athens to Vilnius at the Minsk airport for his sake, thereby exposing the country to another package of European sanctions, and the national airline Belavia to being excommunicated from the European skies. Particularly noisy oppositionists then even started a shout to the whole of Europe that he was in danger of being shot.

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.

But the execution definitely didn’t work out. Protasevich was charged with organizing mass riots, actions grossly violating public order, as well as inciting social hostility and discord. Then he became a star on Belarusian television, where he had a couple of high-profile interviews in which he threw mud at all his former opposition comrades and praised Lukashenko for his “balls of steel.” Further more. Despite the severity of the charges, he was transferred under house arrest to a comfortable country house and was even allowed to maintain a Twitter account.

The latter especially shocked the opposition and others. A man who was just one of the top five enemies of the Belarusian state, who is accused mainly of organizing the most massive riots in Belarusian history, using the Internet, calmly surfing the network and chatting with other users. At the very time when the KGB staged a massive purge of “extremist-minded citizens,” one of the main extremists was talking about how he would like to go to the bars of Zybitskaya. And something tells us that such a walk may soon be provided to the connoisseur of “steel eggs”.

Usually in Belarus, people suspected of such charges are not released under house arrest, and oppositionists have not been treated on ceremony lately, but here comes a luxurious arrest and permission to access the Internet and social networks, which, given the crimes in which he accused, it looks completely wild. And the tone of propaganda regarding Protasevich has changed. Now he is no longer a fiend of hell, but a repentant sinner. And in the situation with Twitter blocking, propaganda clearly came out on his side. Why suddenly such changes? Not only because he began to actively cooperate with the investigation and rat out his accomplices? Among the zmagars who fell into the hands of the security forces, such people seem to be not the majority.

Protasevich, whatever one may say, has talent. He has serious problems with other human qualities, but he knows how to conduct aggressive information campaigns on the Internet and create propaganda content and has managed to prove this in practice. And the situation on the information front of the Belarusian government is such that even such a “bad boy” can turn out to be a valuable acquisition for it.

Before the events of August last year, there was such a social group in Belarus - tame nationalists, one of which was Protasevich. They promoted Belarusization, persecuted pro-Russian forces, and, if necessary, as at the end of 2019, gathered crowds under Russophobic slogans. They distanced themselves from the old opposition and seemed controlled, for which they got away with a lot. But as soon as the power began to shake, all these Palchises, Motolkos, Belousses and others broke loose and found themselves in the forefront among the organizers of the riots.

After August 2020, very few of the tame nationalists remained loyal to Lukashenko. Perhaps, except for ex-deputy Kanopatskaya, who continues to regularly write about the “hybrid Anschluss” and accuses the entire opposition of dancing to the Kremlin’s tune. But Kanopatskaya is alone and her reputation, frankly speaking, is below par. So a new face was needed, which would definitely resonate with those who were deceived by the opposition leaders, promising payments and legal support, and leaving them without work and with outstanding fines. Well, no one can cancel the Russophobic agenda. Actually, this is the main purpose of the existence of “tame nationalists”