Has "Agent" Karanik Begun Taking Action Against Lukashenko?

The Truck Driver will get a chance to try cockroaches sooner.

For years, state media have claimed that the presence of insects indicates a profound crisis in the food industry. And last week, fried crickets were promoted by the head of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Karanik. Has something really gone wrong with Belarusian food security?

Enjoy your meal

“People don’t eat insects because life is good. This was probably only possible here during the war, and even then it was rare. We never stooped to eating worms. Allowing people to eat insects points to a crisis in the food industry,” wrote “Soviet Belarus” in February 2023.

And on August 6, the head of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences promoted alternative food sources and explained that fried crickets taste like potato chips with a slight hint of bitterness.

“They’re delicious. Since it’s lunchtime, let’s have lunch while we’re at it,” said Karanik, and instructed that crickets be added to the menu of the academy’s cafeteria.

But not just added for the sake of it. In preparation for the upcoming science festival, experts from the Academy of Sciences have prepared an entire lecture on the benefits of eating crickets and worms. They’ll explain that crickets and worms contain more pure protein than beef or chicken. They’ll explain that this is a zero-waste production process that’s an order of magnitude cheaper than producing conventional meat. For every kilogram of weight, a cow needs to eat 8–10 kilograms of feed, while crickets need only 1.7. Not to mention all the environmental benefits.

If this were happening west of Brest, no one would even pay attention to the head of the academy’s unusual menu. In Europe, lectures on the nutritional benefits of insects wouldn’t surprise anyone. But in the Belarusian state media, the idea of eating crickets has for many years been a symbol of the West, which is decaying in every sense of the word.

“What’s the benefit? Do you really think Europeans—the Dutch, for example—will start eating worms instead of steaks or fried chicken? There’s no other way. They’re already cutting costs across the board: washing less often, doing fewer loads of laundry, washing fewer dishes, and turning down the heat in their homes. So now they’re eating crickets too? What we can’t wrap our heads around is reality for them,” the same “Soviet Belarus” paper railed a couple of years ago.

Who’s First on the Diet?

State media attributed the population’s shift to a cricket diet to the machinations of globalists who had decided to deprive the working class of steak. “We’ll never stoop to that,” they assured us. “We definitely don’t need crickets and worms on our plates,” wrote the propaganda outlet “ZhS Premium” as early as February 2025.

And propagandist Andrei Mukovozchik explained that a penchant for eating insects is a sure sign of anti-state political disorder. At the same time, he gloated that “our fugitives will soon be eating cockroaches.”

Well, it seems that Mukovozchik will get a chance to try cockroaches sooner. And he won’t just be eating them for the sake of it. He’ll have to eat them and sing their praises, just as the head of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences did. Because someone will have to explain to the people the benefits of cricket farms for the Belarusian economy.

And so, in this regard, I’m plagued by some vague doubts.

What happened?

Could it be that the head of the National Academy of Sciences is an agent of globalism who begrudges the Belarusian people a simple meat patty costing 12 kopecks? Or perhaps our food security has gone off the rails?

“Word has already reached the villages that there are no onions, no potatoes, and no beets,” Alexander Lukashenko complained during his trip to the Vileika District on August 7.

So, given the plans for a cricket-based diet, perhaps he had good reason to worry?

Alexei Mazartov, “Belarusians and the Market”

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