Belarusian many-storied panel apartment blocks have a special property: if you speak loud enough, your voice will resonate through many walls, being heard by all your neighbors. This is especially true for the sonorous bathrooms, which are normally decorated with glazed tiles. Yesterday, while brushing my teeth, I heard muted voices, coming from the neighbors living below. “Another quarrel”, I thought, but then heard something, which was quite strange for a common family row. “How can it be?... We are the Slavs too... Oil!… treating us like this!”. The conversation was emotional, and it was definitely about the latest Belarus-Russian oil scandal. (The Belarus-Russian energy quarrel oil disrupted oil exports to Belarus and oil transits to Poland and many other European countries).
I’ve been hearing conversations like this very often lately – in a bus, in a queue at the post office, everywhere. For many years people took warm heating radiators and bright electric bulbs for granted. They barely knew where the gas came from. Now the energy supply issue, which was only familiar to experts, has become common knowledge.
The official propaganda, which has been backing the state policy of maintaining close ties with Russia for years, has reversed itself. Now Russia is depicted as a rich and greedy beast, trying to force Belarus to its knees. By refusing to reform the Belarusian economy, Lukashenka put the country on the edge of the economic crisis. Now he tries to shift the blame from himself to Russia. Very soon, if the crisis is not solved, the prices will go up and the salaries down. “Bad Russia!” the people will repeat after the TV anchors in the first month of the crisis. “Ok, Russia is bad, then do something!” they will say a month later to their president.
But what can you do, Mr. Lukashenka?
