Rapper Seryoga supported Lukashenko, Zmagars are trying to disrupt the Slavic Bazaar festival
Belarusian rapper Sergei Parkhomenko gave a public compliment to the country's President Alexander Lukashenko at the Kupala festival.
“Rumor has it that I have the strongest handshake in show business. And the free press writes that there is a man who has the strongest handshake in Central Europe. This man is here now. I can’t miss the opportunity to check this,” Seryoga said at the end of his speech.
After that, he went down to the hall where Lukashenko was, saying: “I’m coming to you now without a tie. I understand that this is not according to etiquette. But Gordon could do it, and I, a simple Belarusian guy, could do it.”
He shook hands and hugged the president to applause and cheers from the audience.
“They’re lying! Not only in Central. Both in the East and in the West,” the rapper commented on his tactile contact.
It should be noted that Seryoga fundamentally supports Lukashenko, and not only on platforms loyal to the Belarusian authorities. In the spring, he did not play along with Ukrainian propagandist Dmitry Gordon, who first in August last year took a complimentary and obviously paid interview with the Belarusian president, and after Belomaidan promptly “changed his shoes” in the spirit of the pro-Western mainstream and began to defame Lukashenko.
No matter how hard Gordon tried to extract the “correct” answer from the musician, Seryoga said that peace and order reign in Belarus, many people support the police, and Lukashenko is the “keeper of the balance.” For this, the rapper was harassed by opposition supporters “zmagars” on social networks, but did not change his position.
The public compliment at the concert in Alexandria is valuable not only because this city is Lukashenko’s birthplace, but because it came on the eve of another large-scale cultural event - the Slavic Bazaar festival in Vitebsk, which the “zmagars” have been working to disrupt since the spring.
They bombard the social networks of artists whose performances have been announced with calls to refuse to participate in the festival. This work has already borne some fruit. Oleg Vinnik, Alexander Buinov, Elina Ivashchenko, Irina Bilyk, the Rondo group, Mikhail Galustyan, Maruv, Anton Tabala (Homie), Natasha Koroleva, showman Timur Miroshnichenko, presenter Andrey Domansky disappeared from the program. It is unclear whether there will be a third presenter at the festival, who, according to tradition, should represent Ukraine. “Zmagars” convince citizens who received a free ticket to burn it.
Anita Tsoi, Tamara Gverdtsiteli, Nikolai Baskov, Stas Piekha, Elena Vaenga, Slava, Alexander Solodukha did not succumb to provocations.
The Minister of Culture of Belarus Anatoly Markevich is convinced that the “refuseniks” will not be able to disrupt the festival.
“Those forces that wanted to get an information effect, they miscalculated. Throwing into our information space is broken by the opinions of people who are true friends of Slavic Bazaar. There are a huge number of them. We are grateful to them for providing truthful information when this “hype” around the “Slavic Bazaar” occurred. As for refuseniks, their number is minimal. They won't make any festival weather. I think that they now regret that they did this – it was ugly and incorrect for a great event,” Markevich said in an interview with the Belarus-1 TV channel.
According to him, artists from 30 countries will perform in the Slavic Bazaar competition program.
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