Antifake / Factcheck

08 сакавіка 2023

Top 5 Fake news weekly. Belarusian economy has adapted to the sanction

Actually not. National Statistical Committee of Belarus has finally summed up and published the results of 2022. And here is the whole picture drawn.

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The Belarusian economy has adapted to the sanctions, Belarusian officials report. Alexander Lukashenko also spoke about this at the very beginning of 2023.  

“Last year, we managed to overcome negative trends and achieve positive export results in monetary terms. Of course, money is everything. But I would like us to increase exports by the piece, as they say.

Thereby, no matter how hard we try to embellish our results at the end of the year, it doesn’t quite work out. Let's be frank.

Piece by piece means that we sold tractors and other vehicles, tons of potash fertilizers and petroleum products fewer than in 2021.

And due to the fact that there has been a sharp increase in prices for the goods that we sell, we have more or less positive results in exports. In other words, this means that they physically sold fewer tractors and other products, but as prices rose, they sold more in monetary terms than the previous year”, Lukashenka said. 

Actually not. National Statistical Committee of Belarus has finally summed up and published the results of 2022. And here is the whole picture drawn.

In 2022, exports in current prices in dollars decreased by 4%. According to another methodology of calculations — by 4.2%.

But in any case, in terms of money, the sales of Belarus were at least $1.5 billion less than a year earlier.

And Belstat hasn’t published any data on pieces and tons yet, as Lukashenka put it.

That is, even in terms of money, the result is rather negative, then more or less positive.

Last year's results in physical terms, which Lukashenka spoke about, may turn out to be even worse.

Perhaps that's why Belstat hasn't published any data.

Estonia’s Prime Minister demandes to establish control over Moscow and change the mentality of the Russians 

Following Vladimir Putin's address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation with a statement that some forces want to destroy Russia and Russians, the voices in support of it appeared in the Belarusian media and blogs.

Here, for example, is what Ivan Eismont, a head of the Belarus-1 TV channel, said:

“Here is the statement of Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.

Quote. “NATO countries must take control of Moscow and forcibly rewrite the mentality of Russian citizens so that the Russians never threaten again,” she said.

Irish MEP Mick Wallace answered her. "The lunatics have taken over the hospital ... May God help Europe," he replied”.

Posts with the same content in the telegram channels of ATN and Solovyov-Life were detected by us. 

MEP Mick Wallace really published a phrase about crazy people.

But he fell for a fake quote that supposedly comes from the Red Spring news agency.

In its news the words were in quotation marks, as if they belonged to the Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaia Kallas. 

The day before, the Politnavigator website published the same words about the mentality, but without quotes. That is, as a representation of the main essence of the Estonian Prime Minister’s speec, as the author of the article interpreted it. 

There is also a real quote from Kaja Kallas from the video. Here is how she answered the question of what needs to be done so that the threat from Russia never appears again.

“It is necessary to resolve the issue of responsibility also in relation to Russia. After WWII we had the Tokyo and Nuremberg tribunals.

Nazi crimes were condemned all over the world and the German people became aware of the crimes committed by Nazi criminals. It has changed the mentality. 

But there was never a Moscow tribunal”, she said.

But Belarus-1, the both telegram channels Solovyov Life and ATN quite freely interpreted and exaggerated what she said.

Europeans flee to Belarus

The crisis continues on the borders of Belarus with Poland and Lithuania. Lithuanian border guards pass only 50-60 trucks per day with a throughput of 200. That's why queues stretch for 8-9 kilometers.

And Polish authorities prevented EU citizens from entering Belarus, the Belarusian state-run media reported.

“People with their belongings tried to illegally cross the border from Poland to Belarus! There were 3 Poles, 2 Germans and a Swiss.

And almost succeed.

The Polish guards with fright managed to detain them.

Excuse me, what is going on in Europe? Citizens of three European countries are trying to escape to Belarus!

It seems that Western politicians are putting pure wool over our ears. 

Since there are such cases, not everithing is okay with them there”, the telegram channel “SB. Belarus Today” reported.

That's funny. The author of the post linked to the news from the Polish border services. And one click is enough to make sure that everything was quite the opposite.

“A patrol on duty at the Supervision Center in Bialystok noticed several people near the dam on the Polish side who were delivering parcels to the Belarusian side.

Immediately, the patrol was sent to the point from the border post in Cheremkha, who checked the documents of 3 citizens of Poland, 2 citizens of Germany and 1 citizen of Switzerland. People have come to the area of ​​the Polish-Belarusian border with things that they handed over to the Belarusian side”, the Polish border guard service reported.

So these people did not storm the border and did not seek to get to Belarus.

They tried to send something to Belarus. What exactly they handed over, the border guards didn't not report.

Elon Musk is glad that Bakhmut is surrounded by Russian troops 

In the fourth month of the fighting for Bakhmut, the news comes either of a complete encirclement, or of an incomplete one, or of its fire encirclement.

Against this background, a post appeared in the German-language telegram channel “News from Russia”.

It said that Elon Musk was happy about the tweet that reported Russian troops surrounded Bakhmut.

“Elon Musk tweeted that Bakhmut is 'almost surrounded' and 'it's good', it said.

As a proof was  provided a screenshot of Musk’s comments under the tweet from the War Mapper account with a map of Bakhmut surroundings.

Indeed, on Elon Musk's twitter, the feed of his comments on other people's tweets for February 28 looks exactly like the German Telegram channel showed.

But if you tap on these comments, you will see that they are related to different topics.

The “almost surrounded” tweet is indeed about Bakhmut.

But ‘It's good’ he wrote in response to a tweet about a heated mattress cover.

Veterans are insulted in Ukraine by rewriting history and demolishing monuments 

While in Belarus the monument to the poetess Larisa Genyush is being demolished “without attracting unnecessary public attention”, Katsiaryna Tikhamirava, an employee of Belarus-1 state-run TV, in her “Katyusha's calculation” show convinces viewers that history is being rewritten in Ukraine, including demolishing monuments, which offends veteran. 

“For the past decade, the Ukrainian authorities have been diligently rewriting their own history and continue to do so to this day. First, monuments to Lenin fell, then they even reached the graves of those who liberated Ukraine from the oppression of the Nazi invaders”, she said.

Then a senior man with medals and on crutches was shown.

«Senior: I fought, I was lying in blood ... my arm was torn off, there were two holes in my head ... my leg ... tell me, what did I fight for, Comrade Colonel ?!” he said.

Looks as if the front-line soldier is deeply saddened by the demolition of monuments to Lenin and the soldiers-liberators in Ukraine. But, as it came out, the video with the veteran had nothing to do with the demolition of the monuments.

The YouTube channel KotTV published this video with the title “Veteran homeless person and President Poroshenko” on October 26, 2014. That means, the TV channel “Belarus-1” included the fragment from the 8-year-old video into the news plot.

And now let's find out the reason for the senior's distress.

Here is another snippet from the same video with the following dialogue:

— Are you waiting for someone here?

— Yes, I'm waiting for the president. On May 20 in Uman, there were 10 thousand people, he told me that he would help me. So I'm waiting for him to ask if he will help me or not.

The senior is waiting for the president, who promised to help him.

In May 2014 Petro Poroshenko was running for President and visited Uman to speak at an election rally.

And in October he visited Odessa, where this video was filmed.

The hero is Nikolai Ivanovich Skalevsky, a disabled person of the 1st group, who said that he had been in line for an apartment for 20 years and still could not get it.

“I've been waiting  for an apartment for twenty years, I'm a bum. And my wife is disabled as well”, he said.

However, according to volunteers in Odessa, where the man is known, the story told has little to do with the facts.

If you believe not the words, but the documents, then the man received disability in childhood, which fell on the years of the Second World War.

Then he was 10 years old. And there is no information that he already fought at that age.

And he is without housing now because he has sold his house, moved to Odessa in 2007 and began to demand an apartment for himself.

But that's not the point. The person is well-known in Ukraine due to his support for Ukrainian nationalist leader Oleg Tyagnibok.

Well. Firstly, the senior's front-line past is in doubt.

Secondly, he does not speak at all about what the propagandists put into his mouth. And thirdly, chanses are he isn't against the fall of Lenin, because he is a supporter of the ultranationalist political Svoboda Party.