The world according to BelTA

BelTA headquarters in Minski. Photo: Vanechka dj (cc) commons.wikimedia.org

On that day, a global audience could also learn about the declaration that was published on the portal of the Belarusian minister of industry, Alyaksandr Rogozhnik, stating that “there is practically no doubt that the growth rate of industrial production in 2023 will exceed 112 per cent.” Similar optimism was expressed by Olga Kuntsova, the head of the commercial department of Belkoopsoyuz (a multi-industry state organisation), when she stated that in December alone, her enterprises had produced: over 40 tonnes of confectionery products such as themed cakes and gingerbread products; over 62 tonnes of processed products and semi-processed culinary products (such as meat roll-ups and stuffed cabbage rolls); over 20 tonnes of sausage and meat products (lard, cured meats, salami, etc.); as well as about 150 tonnes of canned and pickled products. In the same vein, the Belarusian Cement Company proclaimed huge success with plans to build a large production and logistics hub in the Moscow region. Finally, the Belarusian National Library announced that it had already received 100 books in donations from the Turkish presidential library.

Bitter ointment in a barrel of sweet honey

BelTA also did not fail to mention the visit of Belarus’s defence minister, Viktar Khrenin, to an integration and educational centre in Orsha, which was part of a larger charity project called “Our Children”. During the visit, the minister said that if someone wants to make a child happy, they should surround him or her with “care and love”.

As if there were not enough occasions for celebration, on the very same day BelTA reported that in Brazil the association of journalists called “Abrajinter” awarded Sergey Lukashevich, the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Belarus to Brazil, with the title of “Ambassador of the Year”. Lukashevich received this title for his efforts to strengthen media cooperation between Belarus and Brazil.

Among these aforementioned reports, as well as many other “success” stories and expressions of optimism that can be found on BelTA’s website, careful readers can yet notice that there is a spoonful of bitter ointment in this barrel of sweet honey. Somewhere between the stories of the international successes of the representatives of Belarus and promises of the country’s better future, are also the words of the spokeswoman of the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, who stated that Ukraine was preparing a provocation and will spread toxic substances to accuse the Russian Federation of using chemical weapons. With these words, it was suggested that Ukraine could attempt “a provocation similar to the one that took place in Bucha”.

The above examples published in just one day can be treated as puzzles of one larger set that depicts the world according to the propagandists of BelTA. After all, the largest Belarusian news agency has been in operation for more than 100 years now. It was established on December 23rd 1918 as a branch of the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA). In 1921 it was transformed into the Belarusian Office of the Russian Telegraph Agency (BelROSTA) and in 1924 into a branch of the United Commercial Telegraph Agency (BelKTA), which finally became the Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BelTA) in 1931. Since 1935, the agency’s structure was unified with the structures of other news agencies of the Soviet republics. Arguably, until 1991 BelTA, although legally an independent organization, was a part of the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS). Although independent Belarus began the process of reforming its news agency, all efforts to democratize it ended on October 10th 1995 with the decree of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. According to this declaration, the agency had its Soviet-era name and purpose restored in the state media system.

Today, BelTA’s motto is “Fast, solid, efficient!” Indeed, in line with this, fast, solid and efficient state propaganda is swiftly flowing to audiences inside and outside Belarus. Every day BelTA distributes 150 to 250 news announcements and publishes hundreds of photos, which are grouped into 20 to 25 thematic threads. Needless to say, the agency is the owner of the country’s largest photo database. The agency’s dynamic activity is made possible by its offices and regional correspondents, who operate in different parts of Belarus and Russia. In March 2023 the agency announced plans to expand its cooperation with the Chinese state news agency – Xinhua.

Official estimates state that the agency’s portal (“belta.by”), is visited by around two million users per month. More than 80 per cent of them come from Belarus. On Instagram, the agency’s official profile is observed by 27,900 users, while on X/Twitter, its account has more than 37,000 followers. A large audience is found on Facebook, where the agency has 89,000 fans of the Russian-language version and 4,400 fans of the English-language version. BelTA’s profile on Vkontakte, the Russian social media site, has more than 44,000 subscribers, while its Telegram channel has over 60,000. On “dzen.ru” – a Russian news aggregator by Yandex – it also has almost 29,000 observers. The most impressive numbers are yet to be found on the agency’s YouTube platform, where @beltavideo has 1.46 million subscribers, the result of an  increase of about 800,000 over the past year. Through this video platform, BelTa has published more than 13,000 videos.

Get to know Belarus better

BelTA’s international expansion was accompanied by the launch of the international Radio Belarus in Minsk and Polish versions of Belarusian TV programmes on YouTube. In October 2023 the agency’s website also started publishing content in Polish. This was the sixth foreign language edition of the site, after Russian, Belarusian, English, Spanish and Chinese. According to official declarations from the Belarusian authorities, it was created so that Poles could “get to know Belarus better”.

The agency’s director general, Iryna Akulovich, defined the goals of the initiative in this way: “The Polish version of BelTA’s service is an opportunity to convey to our neighbours, ordinary Poles, what their own government is trying to hide from them. Belarusians stand for peace, we don’t want war and we don’t intend to attack anyone. We want Belarusians and Poles to travel freely, to visit each other, especially since so many people have family ties in the neighbour country … we are also for tourist trips – after all, there are many interesting things in our countries, we are for business contacts, because you cannot be neighbours and wage trade wars at the same time. Working on the introduction of information in Polish, as well as the introduction of a visa-free regime for Poles, will help them get to know our country better and get to know the initiatives that are proposed by the Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.”

The tone of this statement is indeed quite unusual, given the state of current Polish-Belarusian relations. At this point, it should also be mentioned that it was BelTA that was the first to publish photos from the courtroom in which Andrzej Poczobut – a Belarusian journalist from the Polish minority – was placed in a cage in handcuffs.

Ostensibly, the Polish-language edition of the agency’s portal includes Belarusian propaganda that promotes the country’s economic success and the effectiveness of Minsk’s activities on the international stage. Yet truth be told, all these pieces of news serve only as background in the constant promotion of the most important figure – Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The president of the republic is always presented, through all channels of the state propaganda machine, as the father of the nation, a politician, a protector of immigrants and refugees, a statesman, a negotiating partner, a harsh but fair judge and a practicing “Orthodox atheist”. Seemingly he is one leader, but with many different guises and appearing in countless places: at a factory, in the fields, at a concert hall, in the parliament, in Africa, in Sochi, in a sauna. In other words, Lukashenka is shown to have been everywhere, which for a large number of Belarusians who were born after 1994 has become the reality.

Anti-Ukrainian and anti-western

The use of propaganda tools by non-democratic regimes is not something new or particularly sophisticated. For years, BelTA has been a broadcaster that does not even pretend to be objective. As a result, it is commonly perceived as a means of spreading Belarusian and pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation. It was more than a decade ago when the European Council decided on October 15th 2012 to impose sanctions on then BelTA director general, Dmitry Zhuk. This act was a part of the punishment imposed by the EU on Lukashenka’s regime for suppressing opposition protests after the 2010 presidential elections. At the time, the  Council emphasized that Zhukov was responsible for transmitting state propaganda through state media, supporting and justifying repressions of the opposition and spreading disinformation about the situation in the country.

Evidently, since the stolen 2020 elections and the mass protests, BelTA has been increasingly used by the Belarusian authorities to maintain, or even expand, the areas of information that they want to extensively control. It has also been used by the regime to respond to the policy decisions taken by some social media owners and administrators that allow for restricting the dissemination of posts, videos or photos generated by BelTA and other government-controlled media. Specifically, this policy allows for labelling posts that have been published by Belarusian state broadcasters as an expression of the position of a non-democratic regime.

Such actions, as well as the limiting of the number of results that are linked to Belarusian propaganda and disinformation in internet searches, are meant to support the activities of the Belarusian opposition and war-affected Ukraine. Namely, these are attempts at counteracting the narrative of the Belarusian authorities, which since 2020 has clearly been in line with the rhetoric of the Kremlin and since 2022 also explicitly anti-Ukrainian.

Such shifts are of course a natural consequence of the political changes that have taken place within the Union State, which – first and foremost – include the gradual loss of information independence by the Belarusian state. According to BelTA, Russia and Belarus are united by a special and unique relationship. This means that, on the one hand, they can operate as two separate states, but, on the other hand, they exist as one civilizational unit which promotes similar values and applies a common interpretation of the past. The union also has a unified way of presenting and justifying the war in Ukraine, and a negative assessment of western (especially US and NATO) involvement in the affairs of post-Soviet states. In the past, Russia and Belarus indeed have shared many things but it is possible that they will share even more in the future.

The cloning of various versions of BelTA’s portal or its social media profiles is a method of globalising the tools that are used to promote Belarusian and pro-Russian narratives. To achieve this, a growing number of foreign “experts”, “analysts” or “specialists” are invited and broadcasted by these outlets. The voices of these people, with strong anti-western messages, are published not only in the materials that are distributed in Belarus and the Union State but also in the news aimed at non-Russian-speaking audiences. They are meant to give an impression of objectivity and reinforce the power of the narrative that is being put forward. At the same time, it is hard not to notice the strong emphasis on the promotion of these anti-western messages.

Following the best working neo-Soviet propaganda patterns, BelTA has prepared and implemented a special project called “Now we are Belarusians”. In its framework, the agency spins stories (obviously saturated with authoritarian newspeak) that present people who emigrated to Belarus because they found “a paradise on earth” there. This idyllic picture ignores one grim fact, nonetheless. This is namely the fact that, as of writing, there are 1,427 political prisoners in Belarus. BelTA has not mentioned them, not on December 27th 2023 and not on any other day.

Justyna Olędzka is an adjunct professor at the University of Białystok. She specializes in post-Soviet states and is also a member of the Analytical Group “BELARUS-UKRAINE-REGION” established by the Centre for East European Studies of the University of Warsaw.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka, belarus, propaganda