br23 blog - minsk, belarus

On Saturday we visited Lobkowicz’s castle near Prague, saw the original paintings of Lucas Cranach, Rubens, Breugel, and many other famous painters, including unique paintings of Spanish artists from 15th and 16th century. Walking through the castle rooms I felt awed and even subdued by the weight of this centuries-old art and European civilization. And […]

Ze Germans are still pressuring Czechs about “bad treatment” of Germans during World War Two and apparently are planning to engage in WWII revisionism:
Even before a new Czech government has been constituted, prominent German politicians are exerting pressure on Prague. They are demanding the indictment of former members of the Czechoslovakian resistance against Nazi-occupation. The […]

Tomasz Wacko (pronounced Vah-ts-koh) died exactly three years ago. Until yesterday I didn’t even know he existed.
He was an opposition (”Solidarnosc”) activist from Poland, who found refuge in Norway and became a prominent human rights activist at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, also devoting a lot of time and effort to the democracy cause in Belarus. […]

As you can see, Eurosport editors put up the national white-red-white flag (!) next to the name of the Belarusan tennis player Anastassia Yakimova who was playing against Belgian star Henin-Hardenne today on the main court of Roland Garros. The white-red-white flag was banned by Alexander Lukashenka in 1996. Since then he forbid using it […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]