Stories about Belarus from July, 2010
Belarus: A Conscientious Objector Released From Jail
BelarusDigest reports on the release from prison of conscientious objector Yevgeny Yakovenko.
Belarus: Election 2011
Notes and updates on the upcoming 2011 presidential election in Belarus – at BelarusDigest (here, here, and here).
Russia-Belarus: Minsk publishes Nemtsov report
LJ user yury_zagrebnoy reports [RUS] that the Belarusian government newspaper Respublika has published excerpts [RUS] from a recent Kremlin-critical report by former Russian vice Premier Boris Nemtsov, apparently as another step in an ongoing media war between Moscow and Minsk.
Russia-Belarus: Authoritarian antagonism?
Ilya Yashin discusses [RUS] the ongoing conflict between Russia and Belarus and argues that it is a case of authoritarian antagonism.
Russia-Belarus: Not the end of the godfather story
Siarhei Bohdan of Belarus Digest discusses the ongoing propaganda war between Belarus and Russia, as previously reported, following a gas conflict earlier this year.
Belarus-Georgia: Relations reawakened
LJ user sukhumi1 discusses [RUS] a thaw in relations between Belarus and Georgia after an interview with Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was sent on Belarusian state television earlier this week.
Poland-Lithuania-Belarus: Grünwald 600 years
Belarus Digest writes about celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the battle of Grünwald, when troops from Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus defeated the Order of the Teutonic knights – a major turn in the medieval regional balance of power.
Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan: Customising customs
The Pipeline writes about remaining unclarities about the customs’ union that Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan recently entered into.
Russia-Belarus: Godfather of refused offers
Is it a deliberate provocation, a government-engineered attack on a foreign head of state, a gas-giant's attempt to rock Russian foreign policy - or simply an example of good and critical journalism? Questions abound in the Russian-language blogosphere following Russian TV-channel NTV's 4 July screening of "The Godfather" - a documentary about Aleksandr Lukashenko, omnipotent president of neighbouring Belarus.
Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan: Realities of the customs union
LJ user Mestnye discusses [RUS] the recent agreement on a customs union between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan enter customs union
GUS-News reports [GER] that the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan today finally signed a long-awaited customs agreement.
Belarus-Russia: PR campaign against Lukashenko
Belarus Digest draws attention to the TV-movie “The God Father” – a documentary of Belarus under Lukashenko's rule, and sees it as a sign that Moscow wants to put pressure on Minsk.
Belarus, Ukraine: Chernobyl Evacuations, Exclusion Zone
Chernobyl and Eastern Europe writes about the Polesie State Radiation Ecological Reserve in Belarus, and cites Soviet-time evacuation documents, listing numbers of people who were evacuated from the areas close to the Chernobyl Power Plant following the disaster of April 26, 1986.
Belarus: Conscientous Objectors Demand Introduction of Alternative Service
The story of Belarusian conscientious objectors to compulsory military service and their struggle for introduction of alternative civilian service – at BelarusDigest.