Talk:Belarus

Quotes requiring work/to be moved elsewhere

 * The Communist-Fascists, who are managers of the press, remove unwanted editors and monopolize the printing base, as it is widely practiced today in Belarus.
 * Vasil Bykau, “Ён Прыехаў, Сам Памёр, Усё Спакойна…” Апошнія Тыдні Васіля Быкава // svaboda.org (in Belarusian)


 * Only four countries in history have surrendered their nuclear weapons. And three of those countries—Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine—did so with nuclear arms that they inherited from the defunct Soviet Union, and didn’t have the wherewithal to control and maintain. (The decision to dispose of this weaponry, in exchange for support from the United States and security assurances from Russia, is still remarkable; had Ukraine and Kazakhstan kept the arsenals on their territory, they would have become the world’s third- and fourth-largest nuclear powers, respectively.)
 * Uri Friedman, "Why One President Gave Up His Country's Nukes". The Atlantic, (9 September 2017).


 * Artyom Shraibman, a Belarusian analyst who has been living abroad since 2021, says the West must focus on his country by adopting a pro-active and long-term strategy that will help transform Belarus into a democratic society and wean it away from dominance by the Russian Federation.
 * , "West Must Adopt Pro-Active and Long-Term Strategy for Belarus, Shraibman Says", Window on Eurasia (April 2, 2024)


 * Grinda stated that he considers Belarus,, and Russia to be virtual "mafia states" ... One cannot differentiate between the activities of the government and OC [organized crime] groups.
 * Spanish prosecutor José Grinda Gonzalez, 13 January 2010, as cited in Luke Harding's Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia (2011).


 * …the Lukašėnka regime is following in the footsteps of Russia and is under the influence of Russian anti-cultists such as Alexander Novopashin who have declared Pentecostal churches “non-Christian” and “anti-Russian” “cults,” accusing them of spying for the Ukrainian and American governments.
 * Massimo Introvigne, "Belarus: New Life Church No Longer Exists", Bitter Winter (January 5, 2024)


 * In the old Belarusian society, women’s stories—however important—were silenced. The crucial change we observe now is that women are not only organising to survive but they are leading the fight. That is indeed incredibly inspirational!
 * Aleksander Kwaśniewski, "Interview with Alexander Kwaśniewski" in Social Europe (2021)


 * My position and the state will never allow me to become a dictator, but an authoritarian style of rule is characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it. You need to control the country, and the main thing is not to ruin people's lives.
 * Alexander Lukashenko, Statement (August 2003), as quoted in BBC - Profile: Alexander Lukashenko (9 January 2007).


 * Putin and I once said in Saint Petersburg that we will refit Belarusian Sukhoi aircraft among other things so that they could carry nuclear weapons. Do you think we talk nonsense? Everything is ready!
 * Alexander Lukashenko, "Belarus threatens to use planes with nuke warheads against West", i24 News, 26 August 2022


 * Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, three states of the former Soviet Union that have nuclear arms on their territory, formally agreed with the United States and Russia today to give up those weapons by the end of the decade and not to seek nuclear arms again. In a wordless, austere ceremony in the barroom of a Lisbon hotel, Secretary of State James A. Baker III and officials of Russia and the three other nuclear-armed former Soviet republics signed a protocol, or legal supplement, to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), pledging to carry out its terms.  They thus laid the groundwork for ratification of the landmark START treaty and for permitting negotiations to go ahead between the United States and Russia for deeper cutbacks in nuclear arms.  The full significance of the occasion, which took months of difficult negotiation to arrange, went far beyond the pale legalism of the six-page documents the diplomats signed. Today's ceremony was a hard-won milestone in a mostly invisible, yet intense diplomatic struggle to maintain control over the world's largest and most awesome array of long-range nuclear weapons, as the Soviet Union, the nation that created and held them during the decades of the Cold War, splintered into more than a dozen parts.
 * Don Oberdorfer, “3 EX-SOVIET STATES TO GIVE UP A-ARMS”, Washington Post, May 24, 1992


 * After the 1986 meltdown, radioactive fallout scattered across much of the northern hemisphere, while some 150,000 square kilometres in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were contaminated, according to the IAEA. That contamination spread as far as 500 kilometers north of the site.
 * Rob Picheta, “Europe’s largest nuclear plant is under threat. But experts say a Chernobyl-sized disaster is unlikely “, CNN, August 19, 2022


 * The Belarusian failure therefore provides a useful test. Here we have an “ethnic group” which is the largest by far in the area in question. According to the Russian imperial census of 1897, more people spoke Belarusian in Vil’na province than all other languages combined. In Vil’na, Minsk, Grodno, Mogilev, and Vitebsk provinces, contiguous territories of historic Lithuania, speakers of Belarusian were three quarters of the population. In the twentieth century, this “ethnic group” did not become a modern nation. In combination with Lithuanian and Polish successes, this Belarusian failure helps us to perceive what national movements actually need.
 * Timothy D. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (Yale University Press, 2003)


 * Officials at the Reich Security Main Office planned the annihilation with cynical precision. They planned a war that declared the entire Soviet population – the entire Soviet population – to be the enemies, from newborn babies to the very old. The enemies were to be defeated not just militarily, but were also to be made to pay for the war imposed upon them themselves, with their lives, their property, with everything that was part of their existence. The entire European part of the Soviet Union, whole stretches of today's Ukraine and Belarus – and I quote from the orders – were to be "cleansed" and prepared for German colonisation. Metropolises such as Leningrad, present-day Saint Petersburg, Moscow or Kyiv, were to be razed to the ground.
 * Frank-Walter Steinmeier, As quoted in the Anniversary of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union speech, 18 June 2021


 * I know that Belarusians woke up. Belarusians—we will never return to the state of slaves, as we had been living for 27 years. I don’t hope—I’m sure, that Belarus will be a success story. We will win [against] autocracy. We will bring our country to democratic changes. I take this belief from the Belarusian people, from those who are behind the bars. I take this belief from democratic countries that are standing with Belarusians at this difficult moment. Together, with the free world, we will be able to bring our country, our wonderful Belarus to these changes as well.
 * Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, "The Pen Pod: Resilience, Struggle, And The Fight For Freedom In Belarus With Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya" in PEN America (23 July 2021)


 * We will need a President who is experienced in economics, in politics, in strategy. I am not supposed to say this, but that’s clearly not me. We have people in Belarus, including among the political prisoners, who deserve to be in this position. People will make their choice. And then, even if things don’t go as we want them to, we will all share the responsibility, because this will have been the people’s choice.
 * Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, "Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya Is Overcoming Her Fears" in The New Yorker (13 December 2020)


 * In this struggle we are inspired by the example of those countries where staunch supporters of the socialist option are in power. They are China which has the world in awe of its spectacular successes in the economy and the social sphere. Cuba, which the US imperialism has vainly tried to strangle for six decades. The dynamically developing Vietnam. These countries challenge capitalist globalization, refuse to submit to their diktat and score successes on the socialist path. The experience of fraternal Byelorussia is highly instructive.
 * Gennady Zyuganov, "Socialism Is Genuine Freedom" (22 November 2017)