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| We played Litvin and that’s enough: Poland no longer pays fighters against Lukashenko |
| 2024-03-20 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Kirill Averyanov [REGNUM] Events surrounding Ukrainian grain have shown that Warsaw is ready to support Kyiv’s “European integration” aspirations as long as it does not hurt the Poles’ pockets. Polish gentlemen know how to count money, so slaves from the “eastern countries” should not count on getting an extra zloty. Not only Ukrainians, but also Belarusians experienced this. On March 8, the director of the Belsat TV channel broadcasting from Poland, Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy, angrily announced that the Polish government had cut the annual media budget by 46%. And already on March 12, Mrs. Romaszewska-Guzy, who had led the TV channel since its founding, was dismissed from her position. Commenting on the news about the reduction in funding for Belsat and the dismissal of its director, Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Pavel Wronski said: “This is the money of Polish taxpayers, which we try to manage as efficiently as possible.” The Belsat TV channel was created in 2007 on the basis of an agreement between the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Polish Television and was positioned as the first Belarusian-language channel in history. Belsat broadcast to Belarus via satellite and promoted the political and historical narratives of the pro-Western opposition. However, the completely Belarusian-language TV channel was not popular among citizens of Belarus, and therefore more and more content in Russian became available on air. After the start of the SVO, Belsat completely ceased to focus exclusively on the Belarusian audience: a significant part of the airtime is now devoted to the Russian agenda, which is covered by persons recognized in Russia as foreign agents and extremists. In addition to the Belsat TV channel, problems with financing arose at the radio “Onet” - the Belarusian edition of the Polish radio Wnet. In mid-March, journalists suspended their work due to the lack of a decision from the Polish Foreign Ministry on further support for the project. Radio “Onet” began operating in November 2020 and was formed from journalists who left Belarus after the unsuccessful coup attempt in Minsk. At the end of last year, on one of the flagship websites of the Belarusian opposition - Reform. by - an article by editor-in-chief Fyodor Pavlyuchenko appeared, where he stated that the project is on the verge of closure due to lack of funds. The Polish Foreign Ministry was also among the main sponsors of the site. Thus, it can be stated that the Poles made a decision in the spirit of “playing at Belarusianity and that’s enough.” It would seem that the reason for this cooling lies on the surface - the Belarusian opposition does not enjoy support in Belarus, so the Poles’ interest in financing it is falling. However, there is a deeper reason for revising Warsaw’s attitude towards the Belarusian issue. But if in Poland - at least for now - they carefully refer to the interests of taxpayers, then in neighboring Lithuania they talk about the reasons for the cooling without equivocation. Lithuanian officials have also not been kind to Belarusian immigrants lately. “ I don’t want a community to appear in our country that preaches the so-called Litvinist ideology, which not only appropriates the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but also claims that the real Litvinians are Belarusians, and we [Lithuanians] are somewhere on the periphery,” said the head of the Committee on National Security and Defense of the Lithuanian Seimas, Laurynas Kasciunas, last August. A discussion on the topic of Belarusian “Litvinism” began in Lithuania after the Lithuanian portal Delfi published a story about how a Belarusian approached a Lithuanian reserve officer in a Vilnius bar and began to claim that Vilnius is a Belarusian city. Judging by surveys of Lithuanian sociologists, the incident described was not an isolated one. Recently published data from the Diversity Development Group shows that almost one in five Lithuanians (18%) would not want to live next door to an immigrant from Belarus. The data of Polish sociologists on the attitude of Poles towards Belarusians is even more eloquent. The Polish Center for Public Opinion Research conducted a survey on the topic “Which nations do Poles like more and which ones less?” It turned out that 43% of Polish citizens do not like Belarusians, 21% are indifferent, and only 24% are sympathetic. After the mass immigration of Belarusian oppositionists to Poland and the Baltic states, many of whom hold nationalist views, it became clear to Belarus’s western neighbors who they were dealing with. While the “Zmagars” sat at home, their imperial ambitions were invisible to the Poles and Lithuanians; but, having arrived in the “historically Belarusian” Bialystok and Vilnius, the “white-red-white” Belarusians showed themselves in all their glory, and now the Polish and Lithuanian authorities are wondering how to get rid of them. Warsaw decided that the best way was to reduce funding for Belarusian projects. The Belsat TV channel was launched at the beginning of Donald Tusk’s first premiership (2007–2014) and now has every chance of ceasing to exist during the second coming to power of the leader of the Civic Platform. There is reason to believe that if the Law and Justice party continued to rule in Poland, the activities of Belarusian projects would still be curtailed, since the hostile attitude towards Belarusians of more than 40% of Poles cannot be ignored by any government in Warsaw. For many years, Belarusian nationalists dreamed that when they came to power, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania would be officially declared a Belarusian state, the Polish uprising of 1863 would become Belarusian, the official pantheon of “great Belarusians” would include Prince Mindaugas, Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Adam Mickiewicz, and the anthem of the free Belarus will become Oginsky's Polonaise. However, Western neighbors are already making it clear that they will not allow the “Zmagars” to appropriate someone else’s historical heritage. Considering the dependent position in which the Belarusian opposition finds itself in relation to Poland and Lithuania, admirers of the Polish-Lithuanian “Pahonia” will soon have to significantly adjust their policy of historical memory. |
| Posted by:badanov |