The Brest TV and Radio Company ‘Belarus 4’ aired the story about Belarusians leaving the country on the program ‘Pryamoy Razgovor’ on June 10, 2024.
“Residents of the European Union are having a hard time coping with their allergies to the influx of fighters against foreign regimes,” says state-run TV host, Maria Varakulina, in the lead-in to the video.
The audience then was shown a fragment of an interview with an anonymous expert, who responded to a question about the growth of anti-Belarusian sentiment in Lithuania. Here is what, in particular, was featured.
“The purely emotional reaction is a reaction to an irritant. People have been appearing who exalt the history of their own people, and their own state, consider it in some ways better than their neighbors, appropriate some historical achievements, and declare that this or that prince was by no means a Lithuanian, he was a Belarusian,” the expert supposedly replies.
The above-mentioned segment is quotes attributed to Vladimiras Laučius, a Lithuanian political scientist, from an interview published by ‘Malanka Media.’ Upon close inspection, the video aired by the Belarusian channel appears to be a patchwork of his different statements. The WTF obtained the original footage and verified Laučius’ actual comments.
The first sentence spoken by the political scientist in the ‘Belarus-4’ footage is“The purely emotional reaction is a reaction to an irritant.”
In the original video, however, the full phrase is: “Emotional reactions are always a response to some form of irritation, and in this case, the irritation is undoubtedly caused by the imperial policies and actions of the Russian Federation.”
Therefore, the political scientist was not referring to Belarussian immigrants but to the actions of Russia.
Later in the ‘Belarus-4’ segment, Laučius is shown saying, “People have been appearing who exalt the history of their own people, and their own state, consider it in some ways better than their neighbors, appropriate some historical achievements, and declare that this or that prince was by no means a Lithuanian, he was a Belarusian.”
In the original interview, this sentence is indeed present but is said in a different context:
“Similar phenomena can occur during any national revival, whether Lithuanian, Polish, or Belarusian. People have been appearing who exalt the history of their own people, and their own state, consider it in some ways better than their neighbors, appropriate some historical achievements, and declare that this or that prince was by no means a Lithuanian, he was a Belarusian. These things happen, but historians should be the ones to sort them out.”
Moreover, the Lithuanian political scientist in this interview expressed an opinion that is the opposite of the statement made by the host of the state-run Belarusian TV channel that Lithuanians allegedly have an allergy to Belarusians:
“I wouldn't say that the attitude of Lithuanians toward Belarusians has deteriorated significantly. There are some irritating factors, which, as I have already mentioned, I associate with the war that Russia is waging against Ukraine.”