br23 blog - minsk, belarus

• 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 […]

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 […]

• scotsman.com: Time to liquidate Scotland and sell off her assets, says expat historian
“The idea that Scotland might one day ‘be a nation again’ should simply be dropped. We had our chance, when everyone else in Europe had it, in the 19th and 20th centuries. But we calculated that the Union and the Empire were […]

TOL reports that certain positive signals are coming in our direction from the “Old Europe” ([1], [2]), but the heart of the Old Europe, Great Britain, confirmed today that it won’t change anything in that regard and will go on ignoring Belarus, as it has been doing before.
Here’s a short summary of RFE/RL Belarus service […]

Apparently, I was not the only one upset and saddened about the fact that Lukashenka disgraces and dishonors Skaryna’s medal, the highest award in Belarus, by giving it to second-rate Russian pop-singers and anti-Belarusan Russian politicians. Today there were two small rallies in Vilnia (Vilnius) and in Prague, with the message “Skaryna’s medal should be […]

I just watched a new EuroNews programme about Belarus, it was called “Vilnius — a capital of Belarusian exiles”. Again and again, there are dozens of serious discrepancies between the original English and the Russian translation. Just to give you an example, here’s the most important, opening paragraph:
Original English version (video in English):
“In Vilnius, Lithuania, […]

I just read Flashnews (a student publication) from my Alma Mater, and the main news story from the latest issue is about a funny little incident that has something to with the Belarusian presidential “elections”:
Students carried the old Belarusian [white-red-white] flag walking around and jumping. “We were in a good mood,” said senior Jamila […]

My online friend Konst published a very nice photo report from Bundestag. Apparently, in an underground tunnel under Spree they preserve many tiles with the inscriptions from Soviet soldiers. I’ve been to Berlin twice and walked around Bundestag, but didn’t know about that tunnel. Here’s one of the photos:

The writing in blue pen says: […]

The news coverage of Alexander Lukashenka’s inauguration ceremony on EuroNews demonstrated once again how biased the Russian language version of EuroNews really is.
The original phrase in English:
“International observers said the [Belarus’] vote was neither free nor fair. EU officials also warmly welcomed Milinkevich this week in a rebuke to Lukashenko.”
was removed and replaced with this […]