"There's A Quiet Resistance To The Russians Going On"

Belarusians choose Europe.

Could Belarus be a consolation prize for Putin if the goals of his war against Ukraine fail? Editor-in-Chief of the Charter97.org website Natalya Radina in interview with Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Portnikov urged not to discount the Belarusian people:

- There is a threat, no argument. Another thing is that it will not be a worthy compensation and will somehow calm down that part of Russians, which today advocates the continuation of the war against Ukraine, those ultra-radical nationalists and other scum.

Secondly, we see that Putin still benefits economically from the relative independence of Belarus. This is where we started our conversation: Putin benefits from the lifting of US sanctions against Belarus, because our country has always been a smuggling hub for Russia, through which goods were sent to bypass sanctions. And, in general, they intend to continue it.

Plus we can now recall the nuclear weapons that the Russian authorities threaten to deploy in Belarus. Here, too, there is a version that this deployment may be connected with the fact that it is profitable for Putin to use nuclear missiles from the territory of independent Belarus, so that our country is responsible for it, not Russia. I really hope that this will not happen, because this is a really scary scenario.

In addition, I am still sure that the Belarusian nomenklatura is against it, and the Belarusians do not want to live in Russia. Of course, it is simply impossible to conduct any social surveys in Belarus. There is very little information that we, journalists, manage to get from the country. But even here we see that there is a quiet resistance to possible Russian occupation inside the country.

Yes, Belarusians can't go out to protest, can't say right now that they are against the war with Ukraine, although they went out and protested, went to prison for 10-20 years. It all happened. Now we see an interesting trend in the same social networks. In the Threads social network, which has become very popular in Belarus, there are heated polemics. For example, some Russian woman appears, who traveled to Minsk, went to some restaurant, ordered some pancakes, didn't like them, wrote "phew". In response, there is a huge number of comments from Belarusians.

"Right, and don't come. We have such disgusting food for Russians everywhere. Stay at home and don't come here!" There is anti-Russian domestic talk going on, and that is very important. It shows the mood of the people.

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