br23 blog - minsk, belarus

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 […]

Alexander Milinkevich was released from jail this morning and staged a press conference in front of the prison gates.
Belarus’ opposition leader commented on an article from a Russian newspaper “Kommersant” which states that Vladimir Putin ordered to stop subsidizing Belarusian economy and is forcing Lukashenka to create a union state under Moscow rule.
Alexander Milinkevich said:
“One […]

• Belarus bids bye-bye to Kazakhstan
“If Belarus keeps playing this well, they sure won’t take other teams by surprise anymore. The men from Minsk have made it to the Qualifying Round for the second straight year. With a 7-1 rout of Kazakhstan Wednesday night at Riga Arena, Belarus wrapped up the second seed in Group […]

Maybe some of you remember, recently a British EU minister said there are no plans whatsoever to have BBC in Belarusian language. A fellow blogger Halldor2 (from the United Kingdom?) wrote an inquiry to BBC, to which he actually received a reply. Here’s BBC’s answer about Belarusian language broadcasting:
Dear Mr McDuff,
Thank you for your email […]

Some hacker has intercepted police talks from the “Chernobyl March” opposition rally in Minsk and put them on the Web (here). Police speaks in Russian, the quality is dreadful, and they use their own jargon and code numbers, so I didn’t get a whole lot from the audio (mp3, 11 minutes). Here are some of […]

That’s a photo of my grandma’s bedroom in her private house in a small town in Eastern Belarus. I took the photo exactly one year ago, on May 5, 2005.
In the corner you can see several Orthodox icons decorated with a traditional Belarusian towel (rucznik).
The portraits on the wall are of my grand grandmother, […]

München. RFE/RL Belarus Service. 1957-1958
This is a legendary team of Belarusian journalists from late 1950’s: the two guys sitting in front are Uladzimir Dudzicki (to the left; with glasses) and Piotra Sych (to the right). The people standing behind are (from left to right) Uladzimir Cvirka, Ryhor Krushyna, Barbara Wierzbalowicz, Janka Zaprudnik. All of them […]

I have discovered Wikipedia more than two and a half years ago. Since then I’ve used it regularly as a quick reference, and I also used to contribute to it a little bit, mostly to the articles about Belarus. Since then several Russian contributors (who openly express pro-imperial, pro-Soviet, anti-Western, anti-Belarusian and anti-Ukrainian political views) […]

Alexander Milinkevich was arrested today in the morning at the office of an independent newspaper and, about two hours ago, Lukashenka’s “justice” system decided to sentence him to a 14-day arrest for organizing an “illegal” Chernobyl protest.
In my opinion, this is the most crucial point after the “elections”. If this arrest of the leader produces […]

1986. I was ten. My dad, a Ph.D. in physics, came home from the applied physics research institute. I think it was 28th or 29th of April. It was early evening, about 5 or 6PM, it was sunny and warm, unusually warm for the season. I was standing next to our TV set (an old […]