On February 21, International Mother Language Day was celebrated worldwide. On this occasion in Belarus, Minister of Information Marat Markau threatened to label all those who zealously declare infringements on the Belarusian or Russian languages as extremists. He said that both groups must be fought.
“Some claim that the Belarusian language is being suppressed in the country, while others shout that the Russian language is being suppressed.. Neither is working for the good of the state. In essence, both groups are bordering on extremism by trying to create discord in our society,” the official said on CTV’s Surovyi Vzglyad program on February 22, 2026.
Ryhor Azaronak, a presenter from the CTV channel, addressed the topic of national self-determination following the Minister. On February 26, he published a fragment of Maksim Bahdanovich’s text on Threads. In it, the Belarusian classic author discusses the origin of the “three Russian peoples”:
“There are three Russian peoples. All of them share the same root, but for a long time they lived separately, and thus three different Russian peoples emerged from them; each has its own name, its own speech, its own customs, its own songs, and its own clothing. One Russian people lives around Moscow and further beyond; it is called the Great Russians. The second lives around Kyiv and is called Ukrainian. We are the third people of the Russian root, called Belarusians, and our country is called Belarus.”
The Weekly Top Fake team studied the primary source, a letter addressed to ordinary people titled “Who are we?” Azaronak selectively quoted the classic, ignoring the author’s conclusions about the history of Belarus’s relations with its neighbors.
“For hundreds of years, we lived this way, submitting to no one, but eventually the Poles defeated us and came to rule in our Belarusian land. And when Poland was destroyed, we passed to Russia. We live between the Poles and the Great Russians, powerful peoples, and we have suffered much injustice from them,” Bahdanovich wrote.
In the same essay, he called on Belarusians: “Look around: everything that is ours — native and Belarusian — is being squandered, destroyed, and disappearing, because it is being killed, suppressed, and scorned, while what is foreign dominates, flaunts itself, and enjoys honor and respect.”
Ryhor Azaronak only used the part of the text that fit his ideological concept of unity with the Eastern neighbor. At the same time, he completely ignored the author’s remarks about the many grievances caused by neighboring peoples, which the poet included Russia among.