Lukashenka’s Attack on the Internet Media a Fool’s Errand, Kalinkina Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 12 – It doesn’t matter why Alyaksandr Lukashenka chose to go after the Internet media in recent weeks or even the denunciations it has sparked in foreign countries, Svetlana Kalinkina says. What matters is that this enterprise is a fool’s errand, something that won’t work as planned but that the fools around the Belarusian president are likely to continue.

            Such “a special operation,” the Belarusian commentator says, is something only fools would engage in because only they would not understand that “having taken control of the editorial offices of an Internet portal or information agency” yields them “only walls, an office, and technology” (belaruspartisan.by/politic/434348/).

            “This is not television or radio where the main capital are broadcast frequencies” or “a newspaper where sufficiently large investments are necessary and official registration is required for a new start,” Kalinkina says. Instead, “the basic capital of Internet media are people and their reputation.”

            No matter what a repressive regime sends against them, she says, “people will leave and will create a new site” – and they will continue to function.  Intelligent people understand this, the commentator says; but “no one doubts that in our force structures, there are not a few fools” – and they simply don’t understand that they are creating a scandal without achieving their ends.