br23 blog - minsk, belarus

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 […]

This Ukrainian journalist was arrested in Minsk today. It would’ve been “business as usual” for our police forces, if not for one peculiar circumstance: she was arrested exactly at the moment when she was reporting live from the Milinkevich’s meeting for the Ukrainian 5th channel evening news. So her screams were heard by hundreds of […]

Last week I was invited to a workshop in Ukraine, to teach a two-day class about internet, blogging, web publishing and CMS systems to a small class of Belarusian NGO activists. This sounded like a great opportunity! I would’ve loved to share whatever knowledge I have about WWW publishing with my fellow countrymen, and even […]

It seems Russians screwed up yet again. They are going to sell gas to themselves for $230, while Ukraine is going to get it for $95 per 1000 cubic meters. That obscure Austrian-Russian intermediate company is created by “Gazprom” just to safe face. It’s funny to observe the Russian blogosphere and see how many Nazi […]

My blog is currently ranked as #1 result on Google and MSN for the search phrase “ukraine russia gas war”, which is nice, though I must confess I’m not such a credible source of information on that. Of course, I follow the news just like everybody else, but I don’t have any insider’s information.
As of […]

IMHO, Ukrainian-Russian “gas war” is one of the most important and crucial battles in the region, ever since USSR broke up. It also shows what kind of treatment Belarus might face, if Kremlin gets upset with our political line. The problem is that now Belarus is very dependent on cheap Russian gas, and by the […]

Toronto Star published a brilliant commentary about Vladimir Putin’s best friend Gerhard Schroeder:
It’s one thing for a legislator to resign his job, leave his committee chairmanship and go to work for a company over whose industry he once had jurisdiction. It’s quite another thing when the chancellor of Germany leaves his job and goes to […]

I’ve received an email announcement from France about an upcoming international conference on Belarus and Ukraine in Paris, in March 2006, and a culture week of Ukraine and Belarus, at the same time (March 20-25, 2006). Below you’ll find the complete text of the announcement with the details:
Call for papers
Conference «Ukraine and Belarus – […]

“The Muscovites were waxing powerful, but were still vassals. It was in that period [14-15th centuries] that the Muscovites began to call their state by the Greek name for Rus’, Rossiya (Russia), and to call themselves Russians. These Muscovite-Russians had never ruled over Kiev; but the disability did not prevent them from regarding Moscow as […]