Propagandist response: Belarus state-run TV uses Soviet-era names for Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland
Belarusian state-controlled TV stations started to call Poland ‘the former Polish People’s Republic’, while Lithuania and Ukraine were presented as the former Soviet republics of Lithuania and Ukraine.
Interestingly, the unusual names are labelled on several countries that have lately failed to recognise Alyaksandr Lukashenka as a legitimate president. Moreover, the Belarusian authorities believe that they are taking the ‘most destructive’ actions against Minsk.
The inscription ‘former Polish People’s Republic’ appeared in the news story aired on the TV station CTV. Its authors focused on the fact that UNICEF had discovered issues with respecting children’s rights in Poland.
In turn, the words ‘former Lithuanian Soviet Republic’ was part of the report about Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya‘s staying in Vilnius. CTV journalists decided to raise the problem voiced by a number of ‘Lithuanian residents’. The latter allegedly ‘want to know at whose expense Tsikhanouskaya lives in the best hotel in Vilnius’.
Covering the same subject, Belarus 1 called the Lithuanian Republic ‘the former Soviet Republic of Lithuania’ in the news story entitled ‘Who is paying for the banquet?’
Ukraine got in wrong with Lukashenka’s mouthpieces too. As reported earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Kyiv’s intention to stop calling Alyaksandr Lukashenka ‘president’; he is to be mentioned only by name. Reporting that the country is hitting a new sad record in COVID-19 cases, the Belarusian journalists used the strip ‘former USSR’, i.e. the abbreviation of ‘the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’.
