Natallia Radzina: We Are Winning The Information War Against The Kremlin And Lukashenko

Freedom of speech is a powerful response to dictators' hybrid attacks.

Editor-in-Chief of the website Charter97.org Natallia Radzina spoke at the Free Russia Forum, which took place in Warsaw on October 11. As part of the panel “Dictatorships Without Rules or Red Lines: Strategies for Resistance,” the Belarusian journalist shared her experience working on the “Charter ’97” website, which for 28 years has been on the front lines of the information war against the Putin and Lukashenko regimes:

— Next year will mark 30 years since I began my career in journalism. I have been working for the “Charter ’97” website since 2001. The website was founded in 1998, and in 1997 the “Charter ’97” civic initiative was launched, modeled after the Czechoslovak “Charter 77,” a human rights movement from the time of Václav Havel.

The founder of our website, Oleg Bebenin, was murdered in 2010 on the eve of the presidential election. It was an act of intimidation against journalists during the election campaign, which, unfortunately, had the desired effect. A few months later, I myself was arrested, held in a KGB detention center, and officially charged under the article “Organization of Mass Disturbances.” I faced up to 15 years in prison.

Here with us is journalist Ilya Azar, who was actually interviewing me for “Lenta.ru,” when I had already fled Belarus on the eve of my trial after being released from the KGB detention center on my own recognizance.

I’d like to respond to the previous panel, where we discussed how effective our work can be for our countries from abroad. We have a very significant impact in terms of information. And now is not the time to beat our chests and say that “there’s little we can do.” We can do a great deal and have a very significant impact on our countries.

Taking the Belarusian experience as an example, I believe that it was precisely the work of the “Charter ’97” website and other independent media that sparked the revolutionary events you witnessed in 2020. Without our work, this would not have happened. The million Belarusians who took to the streets in protest back then did so precisely because independent journalists had been standing up to state propaganda for many years.
Another of our successes, without a doubt, is that the Belarusian army has not yet entered the war against Ukraine. We were able to counter the propaganda aimed at the Belarusian military—yes, through our own modest efforts. If we look at the scale of Russian propaganda, we can see how many billions Putin is spending on this machine today. Nevertheless, we were able to resist it in Belarus. People do not believe the lies spread by the Kremlin and Lukashenko’s media. Despite the blocking of virtually all independent media, people continue to read them anyway, and today the “Charter ’97” website has millions of readers, even though we were among the first to be blocked on the eve of the revolution.

The same applies to Russian media and Russian bloggers. Your influence is truly enormous. If we combine traditional independent media with the YouTube channels of Mark Feigin, Ksenia Larina—who is here with us today—the Free Russia Forum channels, the hugely popular channel of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, “And Graham Struck,” as well as broadcasts by respected experts, many of whom I’ve met here: Yuri Fedorov, Igor Lipits, Mikhail Krutikhin, Andrey Volna, Evgeny Kiselev, whose programs I participate in, Dmitry Bykov, Alexander Morozov, Igor Eidman, and many, many others—your audience will actually be enormous. That’s hundreds of millions of views.

I believe that you are winning the information war today. Reports have now emerged that in the latest parliamentary “elections,” “United Russia” received 30% of the vote, and that is thanks to you.
That is why we must do what we are capable of. There is an opportunity to work with European and Western politicians, to try to influence the formation of policies regarding our countries—the dictatorships in Russia and Belarus—and to demand the imposition of economic sanctions against them. Here, I would like to thank Poland, which understands Belarusians very well and has been supporting the “Charter ’97” website for many years. Human rights advocacy is, of course, crucial; we must support and assist those who have been persecuted and are now fleeing Belarus and Russia. Political prisoners are being deported en masse in our countries and exchanged for the lifting of sanctions against Lukashenko’s regime. Of course, these people need help.

But information work is key. Because Putin is currently waging a hybrid war against the West, and the West, unfortunately, is barely reacting to these attacks. And all of us are acting today without much support from the free world.

I believe we need to explain to them just how important public information work is in our countries. Free speech isn’t just sound—it’s a powerful weapon. We must carry out counter-propaganda efforts, and the West must support this. We’ve calculated that if we were to provide real support to all independent Belarusian media outlets, it would cost as much per year as a single German “Leopard” tank. That’s not a huge amount of resources.

Why do Europeans need this? To protect themselves from a possible new invasion by troops from Belarusian territory. After all, Putin plans to use our country again as a springboard for an offensive—but this time not only against Ukraine, but also against the Baltic states and Poland.

It is very important for us to speak with one voice and explain how crucial it is to support independent media and bloggers in both Belarus and Russia.

Natallia Radzina pointed out that Russians and Belarusians are similar not only in their dictatorial regimes but also in how their security services operate, including against the opposition:

— In addition to the Free Russia Forum, which is called “Ukraine’s party of victory” and takes a principled stance, there is the “Anti-Corruption Foundation,” and the “Peaceful Russia” party, which, incidentally, receives the lion’s share of Western grants and aid.

Here in Belarus, we have exactly the same pointless office of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and its affiliated structures, which receive millions in Western funds. And when it comes to independent media, the ones that receive support are mainly those that take either a neutral stance or hybrid media outlets that write more about what Lukashenko is doing, and relay the dictator’s propaganda on their websites, rather than outlets like “Charter ’97.”

I see the same situation in the Russian media. Media outlets that take a principled stand and oppose Kremlin propaganda receive minimal support, while hybrid or generally neutral, “herbivorous” outlets that rarely criticize Putin receive substantial funding. And this is where we need to change the situation. And here, too, we must work together to influence these Western officials who are afraid and unwilling to engage in serious conflict with either Putin or Lukashenko.

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