The Authorities Lost the Game

Belarusian generals demonstrated complete and unconditional surrender.

Senator Siarhei Haidukevich talks heatedly in a live broadcast of Sputnik radio. The Belarusian Foreign Ministry, they say, is tired of telling everyone that the West-2017 exercises do not pose a threat to anyone, but nobody hears us. Poor things! Double standards and enemies are all around! Whom and what do we prove?! How is it possible? Why is it like that?

Really, why? The Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, Aliaksandr Lukashenka himself made statements... But they failed to persuade people.

I explain to Siarhei Ivanavich Haidukevich, the Foreign Ministry, and Lukashenka, why it is like that.

The explanation is very simple. It lies in the simple and extremely unpopular word among Belarusian political realities. It is reputation. Belarusian officials (starting with the key one) and their interpreters have such a reputation that any sensible person listen to, but does and thinks the other way around. And this situation cannot be fixed by a decree, an order, a purchase of modern equipment and even executions.

That's why I do not care who and where will deliver shots during West-2017 exercises. I wonder how the Belarusian authorities intend to win in conditions of a modern war. I mean when not only arms and radars are involved, but when the territory is informationally and ideologically "washed".

In this regard, our army has failed before the start of the exercises. At the briefing on upcoming "West-2017" exercises the chief of the General Staff, Major-General Aleh Belakoneu told about unpreparedness for the modern war, lack of understanding of conditions it was waging in, about his own helplessness, when he pronounced a prepared speech and ... refused to answer journalists' questions.

In fact, the general demonstrated complete and unconditional surrender.

I'll go one better and say that a complete surrender is stipulated by the very Belarusian legislation in case of emergency and martial law. Because the law provides for the cessation of work of all media, except those authorized by the state. Plus, the law provides for the blocking of the Internet.

How could such laws be adopted after the Ukrainian events? After all, the whole world realizes that only numerous media, social initiatives, social networks, eyewitnesses, enthusiasts allowed Ukraine to survive, mobilize, find clothes for the army, first to win in the information field, and then even in the armed conflict.

How could they come up with the decision about the need for an information blockade of its own population? Who is the "inventor"? Is this idiocy or a deliberate work for a potential enemy?

I know what General Belakoneu would have said to these questions if he had considered it necessary to answer journalists' questions. I suspect what Lukashenka thinks about this. They say that in the case of war, specially authorized structures, people and media will broadcast, bring the correct information, verified and adopted by the commander-in-chief. But on the eve of the West-2017 exercises all the delegates broadcast. Nobody heard them, no one believed them. Read paragraph 1 - the reputation.

So, West-2017 exercises prove that the war is lost. You cannot shoot.

Svetlana Kalinkina, Belarusian Partisan