Have You Ever Been To "Tsarskaye Sialo"?

Not to the one in Russia, but to the little known one in Vitsebsk.

Despite the modesty of its inhabitants who do not like to tell about their life, it is well known to the citizens. It is a place with ideal roads, courtyards and streets cleaned thoroughly by workers of housing and communal services, luxurious private houses and superior architecture.

It is precisely superior, because local top officials live there, trying their best to show their superiority over the people, i.e. the common people.

It is clear to every inhabitant of Vitsebsk region where their money comes from - from the pockets of the people for whom, by the way, nothing is done at all.

For example, now they want to close the maternity hospital in Vitsebsk because of the lack of funds for its maintenance and repair. They promise to build a new one, but all this is only in words, and you know how much our officials' words cost.

170 people - doctors, nurses, hospital attendants - will be thrown out into the street or transferred to other medical institutions, most likely with lower salaries, and the hospital serves half of the Vitsebsk district.

This is not the first maternity hospital, which has closed in the region. The authorities say that you don't give birth a lot and there's no money, but how can you give birth if you have no job, no normal housing, no prospects at all? And if a woman decides to give birth, where will she go? To the forest, to the open country?

Too many questions and no answers at all.

And where do the answers come from when officials think they are tsars and are busy improving their lives and their Tsarskaye Sialo, where, of course, there is no room for millions of common Belarusians?

Answers appear later, as history shows. When the indignant people stop waiting for them in the kitchens and come to get them at the addresses known to everyone.

Veranika Sys, European Belarus press service