Lukashenko Continues To Be Mocked
- 5.07.2025, 8:59
A dictator is humiliated for a purpose.
Two months ago, it might have seemed that the Belarusian authorities had managed to rein in a journalist of the Russian Kommersant. Andrey Kolesnikov was caught in a mistake: he wrote that at the May 9 parade in Moscow, Alexander Lukashenko did not stand up when a military formation of Belarus marched by.
Later, Kolesnikov was forced to admit the mistake:
- I watched the video broadcast of the parade. I stood up. And I clenched my fist and raised it. And sat down... So it is worth apologizing...
And if the Belarusian authorities and propagandists hoped that after this apology Kolesnikov would write about Lukashenko at least a little softer, they were in vain.
There are a few quotes from the Kommersant journalist's reports from the EAEU summit in Minsk on June 26-27.
"The photo finish, I believe, was left to the president of Belarus. It was he who offered his colleagues to make a family photo against the background of an unbelievably large (like Alexander Lukashenko himself, at least in the eyes of contemporaries), simply huge quarry "BelAZ-75710" with a carrying capacity of 450 tons. Against its background even Alexander Lukashenko himself began to seem less impressive."
"Cold situation. The negotiations in the Minsk Palace of Independence sent shivers down my spine."
"The press secretary of the Russian President Dmitri Peskov, who was standing nearby, recalled how in the same palace a few years ago the head of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko sat in the same situation and asked to bring her a fur coat from the closet in order not to turn gray, in which she sat through the entire meeting in an enlarged, I'm not afraid of the word, composition."
In his texts Andrei Kolesnikov has been mocking not only Lukashenko, but also his entourage for many years.
"A young woman in a coat suddenly burst into the meeting room"
In 2018, the journalist wrote about the "young assistant" of the ruler of Belarus in the Kremlin:
- When the pool of members of the Russian delegation headed by Sergei Lavrov was fully formed and when the Belarusian negotiators approached, his young aide came to the table where Alexander Lukashenko was supposed to sit: either to change a pen or, according to later versions, to put down papers. But yes, the skirt, of course, was short... Or it turned out to be... But the top Russian government officials were annoyed, in my opinion, not by this, but primarily by the fact that the girl was facing them.
In 2019, everyone already knew the name:
- But suddenly a young woman in a coat burst into the meeting room. It was Darya Shmanai, an aide to the "president" of Belarus, whom he characterized exhaustively in an interview with Ksenia Sobchak: "Dashka is over the top."
In 2021, Kolesnikov moved on to trolling the ruler's press secretary Natalia Esmont and his personal physician Svetlana Konoshenko:
- A small but capacious Belarusian delegation, led by Umka, a white spitz who sat, unmoving, next to ... Natalia Eismont, watched from the stands... The spitz endured two periods and only then asked for a walk. By all accounts, it was walked by its owner.
And all this against the background of endless irony about Alexander Lukashenko himself. For example, about his hockey game, Kolesnikov wrote: "However, the 'president' of Belarus had enough for three minutes in the warm-up, and then he sat on the bench for a long time, sprawled out and spread his arms."
This is not the only thing that should piss off Lukashenko's regime. In 2020, a journalist tried to objectively cover the protests in Belarus.
"Girls Against Grandpa"
On the "women's march" on September 12, 2020 during the mass detentions on Freedom Square in Minsk
In August and September 2020, Andrei Kolesnikov wrote several reports from the "women's marches" and Sunday protest marches (observed, as seen by the Salidarnasts correspondent, personally), and interviewed Maria Kolesnikova and Maksim Znak.
The headlines included "Girls vs. Grandpa" and "OMONiya Country." On his social media page, the Kommersant journalist wrote:
- If it is true that Kolesnikova tore up her passport just not to leave after an attempt to kick her out of Belarus, then after such gestures, once and for all, people become symbols of protest and resistance, no matter what happens to them next.
A year later, he noted, "Babariko received 14 years of strict regime. I believe this is a sentence. No, not him."
So why, in a situation when Belarusian journalists are serving prison sentences for their activities on a mass scale, does a Kommersant journalist continue to make jokes about Lukashenko and the repressive regime is unable to do anything about it?
Kolesnikov and Putin
The Kommersant journalist's mockery of Lukashenko cannot be accidental, if only for the reason that Andrei Kolesnikov has for many years been a member of the "Kremlin pool": a group of journalists who personally accompany Vladimir Putin.
Kolesnikov has long even been called "Putin's chronicler." They probably met in 2000, when the journalist, together with Natalia Timakova and Natalia Gevorkyan, prepared a book-interview "From the First Person" - the first authorized biography of Putin. A few years later Kolesnikov was included in the "Kremlin pool".
It is quite possible that Lukashenko's entourage complained more than once and more than twice to the Russian head's entourage about Kolesnikov's tone towards the ruler of Belarus. But the journalist was never restrained.
It's probably not just because Putin has no aversion to the correspondent who has worked alongside him for a quarter of a century.
In Kolesnikov's reports, the ridiculous and oddball Lukashenko is an important character against whom Putin looks like a reasonable and adequate politician.
In addition, Moscow is using its media and propaganda resources to put pressure on the owner of Minsk's Palace of Independence, trying to make him even more loyal and compliant.
Belarusian audiences should also remember that the same Kommersant works under conditions of strict political censorship, not condemning, for example, the war in Ukraine. Allowing criticism of Lukashenko, the media working inside Russia are concerned with quite other goals than improving the situation in Belarus.
Andrei Karas, "Salidarnasts"