Ukraine finally becomes “Anti-Russia” On September 14, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved a new National Security Strategy. … it is entirely built on the idea of a confrontation with Russia, in which its authors seriously expect to win. At the same time, the document is pathetically titled “Human security – the country’s security”, it seems to begin adequately: “A person, his life and health, honour and dignity, inviolability and security are the highest social value in Ukraine.” In relation to post-Maidan Ukraine, where human life has long lost any value, where there is a real civil war, it sounds like a mockery. But “seemingly adequate” ends there. Then the main thing begins – what, in general, the whole document comes down to – anti-Russian demagoguery.
It is a bit incorrect to compare events in Belarus with the events in Ukraine in 2014, but it is worth noting that Western countries do not lose hope of turning Minsk into Kyiv six years ago. For example, Lithuania and Poland (by the way, it is known that it is the Polish special services that oversee the Belarusian opposition) offered Belarus a visa-free regime. But the prospect of becoming another Slavic migrant workers does not tempt Belarusians at all. The Ukrainian government, of course, supports the Belarusian opposition. And this is not surprising. The current government is taking its seats solely thanks to the overthrow of Yanukovych. But ordinary Ukrainians dissuade Belarusians from trying to overthrow the president and tell what will happen to their country if they make a fatal mistake: “Shove Lukashenko off, and that’s it, you will become beggars.”
This is part of an ongoing Russian disinformation campaign on Belarus based on recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives, such as accusing other countries of interference and portraying popular protests against electoral fraud in the country as a Western-led colour revolution. There is no evidence that European countries interfere in any way in the internal affairs of Belarus, or that without Alexander Lukashenko Belarus will become poor. The protests in Belarus erupted to contest the results of the presidential election in Belarus on the 9th of August, which are considered fraudulent by a large part of Belarusian society. The European Union has also stated that the elections were neither free nor fair. The reference to Ukraine is also manipulative. The onset of the Euromaidan protests was a spontaneous and endogenous reaction by numerous segments of the Ukrainian population to former President Yanukovych’s sudden withdrawal from the promised Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013. See the full debunk of this disinformation claim here. According to the World Bank, from 2014 until 2019, the Ukrainian government undertook key reforms, including carrying out significant fiscal consolidation, moving to a flexible exchange rate, reforming energy tariffs and social assistance, enhancing the transparency of public procurement, simplifying business regulations, stabilising and restructuring the banking sector, moving forward on health and pension reforms, and establishing anti-corruption agencies. The resulting Government, which took office in August 2019, and a succeeding government, appointed in March 2020, have both committed to an ambitious and wide-ranging reform agenda. See similar cases claiming that the protests in Belarus are a colour revolution conducted according to a Maidan scenario and that the West wants to prepare Maidan in Belarus. Several issues of the Disinformation Review has been devoted to the situation in Belarus: examples here.