Svetlana Alexievich: There Transpire Serious Things, Which We Are Not Aware Of

The writer commented on Sergei Zhadan’s detention in Minsk.

Belarusian writer and Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich called the authorities’ actions in respect of the Ukrainian writer Sergei Zhadan to be "bad signs", UNN reports.

"These are bad signs – Belarus is afraid of someone, it is not independent. Blogger Lapshin has been sent to Azerbaijan, and now Sergei Zhadan, who is a winner of many international awards," – Aleksievich noted.

"It is unfortunate that our government loses dignity, depends on some web, and we do not know what exactly is going on. Perhaps this conflict (with Russia) is just some kind of an outer game, but in fact serious things, which are unknown to us, are taking place. But the most important thing is that Belarus ceases to be an independent country, it starts to play other people's games," – the writer added.

We remind that at night of February 10, Ukrainian writer Sergei Zhadan was taken to the police station in Minsk, where a ban on entry to Belarus was stamped into his passport.

According to Zhadan, it turned out that in 2015 he was denied entry to the territory of the Russian Federation with the wording "for involvement in terrorist activities." And as soon as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russian Federation have the common visa zone, the ban is automatically applied to Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Later, the Belarusian authorities revoked their own stamp on the ban on entry in the Ukrainian writer’s passport.