During an informal talk with the Swedish Ambassador Martin Oberg, Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka ordered to present him the books by Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, but on behalf of the head of Belarus.
The meeting with representatives of diplomatic missions took place during planting trees of Peace in honor of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war and the founding of the United Nations, euroradio.fm reports.
Martin Oberg congratulated Lukashenka on giving the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature to a Belarusian author.
“Only on this?” Lukashenka hinted at the recent presidential election but immediately said that it was a joke.
If Alexievich had not been awarded the Nobel Prize, no one would not know who she is, Lukashenka stressed.
“She is said to be a sort of oppositionist, but I have not heard about it. Therefore, do not listen to thee talks ‘oppositionist – no oppositionist’. She is not an oppositionist. She has her own opinion. She also had in Soviet times. Well, everyone enjoys the right to have and their opinion. Well, she never called anyone to barricades,” Lukashenka speculated.
When Matin Oberg said that he should read books by Alexievich himself, the Belarusian leader said:
“But there are not so many books written by her. I can give you five books as a present and you will read them. You read in Russian well, don’t you? Uladzimir Uladzimirovich [Foreign Minister Makey] present the ambassador with the last on my behalf.”
On October 24, while awarding the Russian composer and producer with Belarusian roots Viktar Drobysh with the Order of Frantsysk Skaryna during an event dedicated to him in Minsk, Lukashenka said:
“I will also speak about some of our ‘creators’, creative people, even Nobel Prize winners, who had barely received it when they left the country and tried to pour a bucket of mud on the country. This is wrong, this is not the opposition. This is absolutely wrong, because we cannot choose homeland, or parents, our mother. They are what they are. If you talk bad about homeland, if you are ashamed of it, then it is you who is a bad son.”
“People are waiting for the reforms, they have accumulated energy. And we have no idea at all: only to hold on to power,” Nobel laureate commented on Belarusian president Lukashenka’s criticism of her.
