Monitoring pro-Russian propaganda in Belarusian state-owned television media

The pri­ma­ry objec­tive of the mon­i­tor­ing is to ascer­tain and doc­u­ment the occur­rence, quan­ti­ty, con­tent and form of pro-Russ­ian (includ­ing anti-West­ern and anti-Ukrain­ian) pro­pa­gan­da in the lead­ing Belaru­sian state-owned tele­vi­sion media, as well as its car­ri­ers and dis­sem­i­na­tors. Down­load PDF

BRIEF CONCLUSIONS:

1. As was the case in the pre­vi­ous year, Russ­ian top­ics con­sti­tut­ed a small­er pro­por­tion of the evening news pro­grams broad­cast on tele­vi­sion chan­nels than in the 2019–2020 peri­od (as well as the total num­ber of pro­grams pro­duced in Rus­sia and the time of their trans­mis­sion dur­ing prime time). As the mon­i­tors observe, “the ‘Russ­ian’ theme is not only becom­ing less promi­nent in the news agen­da — it is actu­al­ly being removed from the news agen­da and falling into the cat­e­go­ry of addi­tion­al back­ground accents of Belaru­sian sto­ries”.
2. Con­cur­rent­ly, numer­ous sto­ries were observed to con­tain pro-Russ­ian nar­ra­tives. The pri­ma­ry focus per­tained to war, the atti­tude towards Ukraine, and West­ern coun­tries. How­ev­er, these nar­ra­tives appeared not to be mere reit­er­a­tions of pro-Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da but rather “inde­pen­dent” nar­ra­tives of the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, which, in many respects, coin­cide with the Russ­ian ones but pos­sess “nation­al pecu­liar­i­ties”.
3. Nev­er­the­less, the neces­si­ty of con­sol­i­dat­ing the alliance with Rus­sia in both the eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary domains was empha­sised: “Belarus is safer under the nuclear umbrel­la. Just wait for the deploy­ment of Ore­sh­nik”.
4. The num­ber of sto­ries about Ukraine has decreased sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pared to 2024. At the same time, Ukraine was still por­trayed as a cor­rupt and dis­in­te­grat­ing coun­try, but the TV sto­ries did not aim to cre­ate an ene­my image. The focus shift­ed to the Ukrain­ian lead­er­ship and to Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky per­son­al­ly, who was accused of an “over­due” man­date and per­son­al com­mer­cial inter­ests in the war.
5. The vol­ume of sto­ries cen­tered on mil­i­tary hys­te­ria — such as “NATO tanks clank­ing on Belaru­sian bor­ders” — has declined. But the blame for unleash­ing the war in Ukraine was still placed on the “col­lec­tive West”.
6. The Belaru­sian regime’s involve­ment in the war against Ukraine was not acknowl­edged to cre­ate an image of a peace-lov­ing coun­try that does not engage in mil­i­tary con­flicts, in con­trast to West­ern coun­tries that insti­gate wars.
7. West­ern coun­tries were depict­ed as dete­ri­o­rat­ing, fail­ing to imple­ment mea­sures to sup­port their cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es in the con­text of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis (which emerged as a con­se­quence of sup­port­ing Ukraine and impos­ing sanc­tions against Rus­sia and Belarus).
8. High­light­ing the oppo­si­tion between the U.S. and the Euro­pean Union has inten­si­fied. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the Unit­ed States was por­trayed as a “pup­peteer” direct­ing Europe and Ukraine. In recent news releas­es, there has been a shift in tone in reports about the Unit­ed States. There is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that hopes for improv­ing the sit­u­a­tion for the Belaru­sian author­i­ties are asso­ci­at­ed with Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­cy.
9. Dur­ing the elec­toral peri­od, the chan­nels aired a soft­en­ing of rhetoric against the “col­lec­tive West“, a desire for eco­nom­ic coop­er­a­tion, and a shift­ing of respon­si­bil­i­ty for con­flicts to the so-called “fugi­tives“.
10. The top­ic of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was very active­ly dis­cussed. Key mes­sages includ­ed: the elec­tions in Belarus were peace­ful and more demo­c­ra­t­ic than those in the West; the vast major­i­ty of cit­i­zens sup­port Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka. Much of the air­time was devot­ed to hold­ing the Uni­ty Marathon in the coun­try, the pur­pose of which was to present a con­vinc­ing image of the cohe­sion of Belaru­sian soci­ety dur­ing the elec­tion peri­od. “The cen­tral ele­ment of the elec­tion cam­paign is turn­ing com­plete­ly retro — a pro­longed tele­vised series high­light­ing thir­ty years of the president’s achieve­ments. The are recon­struct­ing the sole-oper­at­ed struc­ture. Lukashen­ka hap­pened to the state and is still a guar­an­tor of peace­ful skies”.
11. The strength­en­ing of the cult of per­son­al­i­ty around Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka is plain to see. This may be part­ly due to the tim­ing of the mon­i­tor­ing (pres­i­den­tial elec­tion). How­ev­er, the trends were also observed last year. Lukashen­ka is por­trayed as a wise and car­ing “father of the nation”, a leader who has brought the coun­try out of cri­sis, an expe­ri­enced politi­cian who has kept the peace in Belarus and acts as a peace­mak­er.
12. Notably, in Belarus, refer­ring to the rul­ing regime as a dic­ta­tor­ship has become nor­malised — occa­sion­al­ly with qual­i­fiers like “dic­ta­tor­ship of the good” or “dic­ta­tor­ship of jus­tice”, and some­times with­out, as in the phrase “Bet­ter our dic­ta­tor­ship than their democ­ra­cy”.

Mon­i­tor­ing Pro-Russ­ian Pro­pa­gan­da In Belaru­sian State-Owned Tele­vi­sion Media PDF