br23 blog - minsk, belarus

My online friend Evgeny Morozov wrote yet another brilliant commentary for “Brussels Journal”:
The Russia-EU summit which took place in the Russian city of Sochi last week, was another foreign policy debacle for the European Union. Of course, the EU did reach a number of technical agreements with the Kremlin on issues like visa facilitation, but […]

Good news for RuSSian Nazis and imperialists. Sky Europe (the largest Central European low-cost airline) and “Novy Smichov” (one of the largest shopping malls in Czech Republic) are vouching their full support for Russian imperialism. Here’s the proof of endorsment:

(full-size screenshot)
The “new” map of Europe was spotted at the information kiosk at the main entrance […]

“Banker” published an article about Lithuania in its latest issue:
• Ten years old and looking good (online version doesn’t have table and graphs, unfortunately)
“Lithuania’s banking sector has come from nowhere a decade ago to become a highly competitive business.”
“Hansabankas was the first to introduce chip-cards in the country, and our ATM terminals are now chip […]

I can’t stop noticing that in the last several years I’ve become quite unfocused and lazy when it comes to reading books, both fiction and non-fiction.
University provided me with some sort of mental discipline and a habit to read books, but I graduated in 2000, and since then it seems I’ve been reading much less. […]

There’s a website german-foreign-policy.com which regularly provides news, insider information, insightful analyses, reviews, interviews with top German politologists, diplomats and politicians.
It gives a very good idea of what Germans’ Realpolitik is all about. They are handling politics based on German-centered, strictly practical rather than idealistic notions, and practice them without any sentimental illusions, only with […]

I had an impression after our presidential “elections” that news coverage about Belarus very quickly subsided and returned to pre-election levels after Belarusans “failed” to stage a color revolution contary to Westerners’ expectations. This was just a subjective impression, but my hunch turned out to be correct. Recently, Google launched yet another new nifty tool, […]

It’s a historical victory over Switzerland. For the first time since Belarus gained independence our national ice hockey team has made it to the quarter finals of the world championship. We are playing Finland (Suomi) after tomorrow. What do we know about Finland, except Nokia? We know that they literally call us “White Russia” with […]

More than a year ago Radio Free Europe made a public announcement that RFE/RL headquarters are to be moved from Prague’s center to a different location, away from the Old Town. And recently Czech government announced that they are giving a gift of one million dollars to the radio to be spent on the relocation […]

Today, I started listening to a 6-hour long mp3 recording with the audio book Bill Clinton. My Life read by the author himself. It totally absorbed my attention. No matter what some Americans say, Clinton is an amazing personality, a brilliant politician (notwithstanding some problems), a really smart man. Such a striking contrast to the […]

A youth opposition activist Mikita Sasim has been handed a three month jail sentence for draft evasion.
First of all, virtually no one goes to jail in Belarus for draft evasion. This is exceptional. Second, last autumn he had been granted a deferral from the army doctors because of brain injuries which he sustained after being […]