america well, to be honest, i don't think what i think. and the americans themselves are not very afraid of such emergencies. anyway, one way or another, it will remain under any circumstances. thank you, mr. volodymyr volodymyr grysku, diplomat, minister of foreign affairs of ukraine in 2007-2009, extraordinary and authorized the ambassador of ukraine was in direct contact with us thank you for participating in our broadcast and mr. vitaly and i will be back literally in a few minutes stay with espresso for now you can write your comments, impressions and questions to mr. vitaliy, we have very interesting topics to discuss in the next hours, so stay our ukrainian temporarily occupied cities of heroes, ukrainians in occupation are heroically resisting the enemy and waiting for the day of liberation, support your people,

join the flash mob with the hashtag city of heroes, write about the occupied cities in social networks and become their geolocation in your posts, publish a photo with a yellow ribbon, this is a symbol of support for people in the occupation, ukrainians will keep the city of heroes, february 24, the date that changed us, the date that changed the world and now what we are most interested in is our victory, when we will defeat the enemy, so predict the course of the war , the saturday political club program returns to the espresso airwaves to help understand the events and predict the consequences. on saturdays, vitaliy portnikov and maria gurska will discuss the most relevant things in order to draw appropriate conclusions. you want to know how what is happening today will affect for our tomorrow, look at the saturday political club, that on saturdays,

we are pressed by ukrainians, a nation of brave, hardworking and happy, we sow, we grow, we preserve, we defend under poryka, they are led by approved force, resistance force unconquered wild creatures are not able to choose something else.

and we in ukraine like to choose everything, even if it is insurance on hotline finance hotline finance insurance online, of course, if you are allergic to the drug cetrin, it is important, what kind of pet do you have, what flowers do you like or what do your children secretly eat, these are three things it is important to block allergic receptors and protect the body from an allergic reaction after only 20 minutes - these are three actions in the allergy center unscathed cities of ukraine lviv is a city where more than 2,000 historical architectural and of cultural monuments, its center belongs to the world cultural heritage of unesco here at the monastery of st. onufry ivan fedorov founded

the first printing house and printed the first ukrainian book apostol after the november order and the creation of the west ukrainian people's republic lviv became the capital and the heart of the ukrainian liberation movement in june 1941 on square rynok ukrainian national assembly proclaimed the act of restoration of the ukrainian state, after which the nazis began terror against the ukrainian insurgent army tried to take the city under its control, but the authorities captured by the reds, despite the repressions, lviv residents continued their struggle today, all roads lead to lviv, even angelina jolie did not miss it, it became a second home for thousands of ukrainians, it gives the soviet a ton of humanitarian goods and even under rocket attacks continues to work for victory

in lviv unconquered, we continue the program of the saturday polycloop on tv channels espresso angelika seasoned vitaliy portnikov with you well, in this hour we will discuss at least three topics, three important ones, the first is the anniversary of the a protests in belarus and the preparation of belarusians for war with ukraine, is it real? are these fakes after all, or is lukashenko ready to fight with us or is he still trying to manipulate and drift somewhere in relations with the kremlin? our next topic will be about the pseudo-referendums that the russian federation is preparing in the occupied territories well, let's talk about putin's energy blackmail of europe , we already talked about nuclear today, let's start with the topic of belarus so, the second anniversary of the protests by vitaliy, how has it changed in belarus in your opinion? these two years and are these changes at all visible

to us or are they somehow the driving force? i think that the fact that we saw anzhelika in the belarusians during these protests should once again convince us that, after all , the ukrainian system that was created during the first ten years of ukrainian independence, it is still much more resistant to authoritarianism than the belarusian system. well, i want to remind you that in 1994 oleksandr lukashenko and leonid kuchma won one day in the second round of the presidential election. and by the way, they defeated people who then were considered to be the undisputed identification of the management system in ukraine. this was president kravchuk, who was essentially a person all his life connected to the management apparatus, he was the chairman of the verkhovna rada before he was

the president, secretary of the central committee of the party a in belarus - this is vovkevich the prime minister of the country is also a person who has worked all his life in the governmental party structures of belarus. and people who, in principle , did not directly participate in the management of the state will win. new ice new ice but both under with a pro-russian flag, but the situation in belarus still turned out to be completely different because lukashenko literally from the first days of his rule followed the path of creating an authoritarian regime, dispersing the parliament, killing oppositionists, trying to create a full-fledged dictatorship centered on one person and a special relationship with moscow, which is practically in the middle in the 1990s, president kuchma, in principle, also tried to follow this

same path, but he met strong resistance in the parliament from various sides, from the sides of the national democratic forces from the parents of various clans who did not want power to be concentrated exclusively in one hand, that is, he himself became a representative of one of such powerful clans. so his son-in-law still owns factories , stations, tv channels. but nevertheless, it was not absolute power, the struggle with political opponents was also quite serious, let's remember at least about avangadze, but the society was not silent, they took to the streets of the tapes of kuchma de gongadze, the president had to react to it all, at least he couldn't, i'm not even talking about the issue of involvement now it is clear that the ukrainian society does not perceive the economy, since kuchma did not want to share

profits with moscow, he still had to go to these economic changes that did not exist in belarus , this is how the oligarchs appeared and thus different interests appeared in the economy, in the media business in society in general and lobbying and lobbying of a different nature are said to be fighting each other and actually an attempt to follow the path of the russian belarusian in 2004, when kuchma decided that he would be able to appoint a successor to this donetsk the governor, then the prime minister, viktor yanukovych , we have finished the first maidan in belarus, there was nothing like it on such a scale until 2020, and when people finally understood how much i am a liar, how much does this regime correspond to i would say to my own interests and does not correspond to the national ones, it was already too late, an effective power apparatus was formed, capable of defeating the people themselves, but we often

asked, even at the level of the president of ukraine, why the russians do not protest, do not go to the streets they are protesting they are taking to the streets enough people are protesting in russia taking to the streets are behind bars but hundreds of thousands maybe in some cities there were such cases but not millions but if you can immediately destroy these hundreds of thousands put them in isolation cells, if people are afraid, if they understand that the very act of going out on the streets will likely end in a court case, you are making a swamp case in russia, when all the people who came out in such mass rallies on the swamp square were not hundreds of thousands, there were actually already millions of people there but all these people were unable to do anything, and then the most active were put in prison , photographed, persecuted, and the leaders of the protest were squeezed out of the country, this entire almost russian anti-war committee, these are all people who were actually participants in these protests in the swamp of the square, also in belarus, look at what they immediately they expelled

all those who tried to combine it into this positional structure, they either expelled or imprisoned if you destroy the core of the protest if you lower those who can represent the protest you are of course his you're just weakening, people don't really understand what to do even when there are a million of them, i want to tell you that when we were there on a truck on december 1, 2013, during the second maidan, and there were also about a million people there, and i see that we are not very we all understand who these trucks are, what to say to these people, that is, the politicians tried to talk to them, but it was the revolution that oleg tsykhbok was talking about, oleksandr turchynov said that it was necessary to block the government quarter, but one way or another, the energy of these people had to be distributed so that at least not to provoke not to provoke their clash by the security forces because if it starts, let's say

it is not predicted, the security forces start shooting, it is not necessary that this million defeats people with weapons, people who came and remember then can declare a pardon at this protest rally against the beating of students with small children and elderly people there were many, all of them were really people who were not ready, so they came. it's like a holiday of democracy here. imagine. and it was like that in minsk, that these people start shoot, just shoot, you can usually say that they will go. these golden eagles with machine guns are the winner, but when you are with your bare hands , a crowd with machine guns is coming at you, you can do it in different ways , so later, yes, people were shot. well, that's right, the heavenly hundred as yourself but in any case, then people were already ready for resistance, there were already several clashes, remember near the verkhovna rada, the most important thing about this protest was representatives who were not in prisons, but who went to talk to yanukovych, yes, arseniy yatsenyuk, vitaliy klitschko, oleg

tyagnibok was a huge group of deputies in the verkhovna rada who supported the maidan. there was a group of deputies who did not support the maidan, but did not support yanukovych. they were watching who will win in belarus, none of that. and this helped us win, but it helped the people win if we are talking about the orange revolution if we are talking about the revolution dignity, after all, the people won, then the people win only in one case, if the people have an organization, i am not just if there are many people on the streets, it is important conditions if there are the organization if there is a representative of the protest and if there is if you want in our conditions a coincidence of the interests of the people and the elite politicians yes yes because the oligarchs did not want it, it was so conditional four in the 13th year, the oligarchs who fell in line obviously did not sympathize with the people, but they sympathized with the yanukovych, so the fall politicians are oligarchs. it was happy in our country, of course, but in any case, one of them financed the maidan. someone simply did not want

yanukovych to receive all the power and which allowed him to take away from them everything that you had earned not sown by honest labor. it is obvious to them that in this situation too it was a coincidence of interests. this is common. such an elite is not such an organization with an opposition company at all. it is an interesting story, because you look at what lukashenko did all ten years of his stay in power. ideas and expelled those people who said that belarus is a european state, that belarus should be in the european union and not in the union with russia, he planted, killed, marginalized , in the end, the political scene of belarus turned out to be cleansed of the belarusian national democratic position and already began to argue with lukashenka. i would say that ordinary people who did not

have obvious political views, they simply and they perceived lukashenko himself from lukashenka himself as a brake on the country's development. i would say that these were all products of lukashenkivska, belarus , this is baba riko, who was the head of this baltransgaz, the blogger tykhanovsky, his wife tykhanovsky became a candidate because he was not allowed to participate in the elections. it was a random situation and it can be said that zatykhanovsky was voted not because she was a notion of some belarusian national or european idea here, so that she was in favor of this idea that we do not want lukashenka , no, and in this, on this plane, lukashenka could also win more because, in principle, he fought with by those who are vov against him and not with an alternative path to the development of the state, this is an alternative path that belarusians became aware of only during the course of the protests.

it's interesting to have it. imagine that president kuchma comes to power in 1994 and says, let's think about a referendum. why do we need this blue-yellow onion, the fascists of bandera, and this trident, the fascists of bandera - it was under these flags that our grandfathers were killed. it is not known that lukashenko held a referendum on the white-red-white flag, which i doubted was the national flag of belarus , it is the embodiment of belarusian statehood , it was canceled by referees with the participation of the majority of belarusian citizens, i assume that this referendum, of course, could have been tampered with. most of the referendums held by lukashenko as president of belarus. i generally believe that the presidential elections of 1994 were canceled and tampered with by the kgb, because lukashenko was an agent of the russian special services. i have no doubts about this. are these unfair elections or he i never

won any fair elections, but even if there was a critical mass of people who simply wanted to protect their own flag, no referendum could pass , so there was no such critical mass. i say again, belarusians matured very late to personify themselves, not even as a political nation, as ukrainians even become in the last eight years. where were you for 8 years? they became a political lecture, but belarusians have at least matured to the level of a society that would like to make its own choice. why is their path so long ? is this a mentality or is it possible? propaganda with which belarus is as saturated as the russian federation. well, i think that is what it is. of course, this is not a mentality if, during the lublin diet , the borders between modern ukraine were not drawn. in modern belarus, it is possible that it was just one people and genetically. it is definitely one people. if you

conduct dna tests, you will not see the difference on different sides of the border as russians and not with russians , rather with belarusians. it's very difficult there, because you know, i read a study that said that the russians of the north, arkhangelsk , great novgorod, they have completely different dna than the russians of central russia and the south. in the time of ivan the terrible, they simply crushed us , they couldn't because we were in the grand duchy of lithuania then, but the current ukrainian territories were able to, it was essentially another nation from another language, as you remember with other traditions, with this novgorodian sofia, now novgorodian the republic of pskov, the republic of pskov. well, they made russians out of them, but politically, they are russians. but this is another slavic nation, which, unfortunately, died in our historical eyes, you can say in the historical

eyes of other slavs, but as for the belarusians, you understand look at what happened in ukraine and belarus after joining russia, this is an important moment, you need to know about it, the ukrainians were orthodox . it was the kyiv metropolitanate . the russian orthodox church wanted to annex this kyiv metropolitanate , but the greeks did not agree. incorrectly translated cross from two fingers like boyars to ice cream and and please do everything in the reform so that you look normal then you can take kyiv metropolitan because we will not step on your two fingers in order to give you something and there were famous niko reforms on which, by the way, the russian people separated the russian church. in the middle ages, they were

burned in some siberia and sent to this boyarinya ice cream - this is yours, she shows these two fingers when she is taken somewhere to be exiled to the pipes, so that she will die there for her faith, but the ukrainians did not have such adaptations because they are like that, they are from that the kyiv metropolitanate became part of moscow, but the ukrainians remained in their churches and as their priests. by the way, for the most part, a large number of ukrainian acts went to russia, rather than vice versa, and now, as you know, until the 90s, the majority of russian priests there were ukrainians for the same reasons. the fact that the ukrainian people were very devoted to these religious traditions, which for them, despite the fact that byzantium was replaced by moscow, they were far from interrupted there, and the belarusians angelika were greek catholics, almost the entire nation, like galicia and they came and, of course, all of them at once. they banned the greek catholic church, so we know

very well with you about the ban on the ukrainian greek catholic church here in the western regions of ukraine after the second world war, and imagine what happened under the russian tsars with belarusian territories throughout territory, not the entire territory of belarus, here. if you look at the famous sophia polychka, there is another such sophia, which is the main cathedral of the principality of polychsia, you will see there such a mixture of greek-catholic and the orthodox tradition, because when it was a long century of greek-catholic cathedrals, it was already created in such florentine baroque traditions, it turned out almost very beautifully, and it does not look like an orthodox church, as you understand it, or it looks like the kind of greek-catholic churches that we see here in lviv or there are more cities in ternopil region in ivano-frankivsk region in transcarpathian region, you can see how it differs from the

architectural tradition. came it was definitely a russian church, it engaged in the russification of belarusians because it was the main instrument of russification. imagine that on the one hand you are... keep going to the church of the tsarist 17th-18th centuries, people are deeply religious and there in this church they squeeze you out and your connection with the polish tradition, which would have been quite strong then, and your connection with the tradition that you had your own religious, that is, you belarusians are made into russians, and that's why when the belarusian people woke up at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century the father of these institutes that could contribute to the belarusianization of belarusians well, there were no such strong national centers the first belarusian

books the first belarusian newspapers the first belarusian writers denominators who created the belarusian consciousness there yanka kupala and yakub kolos they were published in vilnius free stopped outside the borders of belarus the belarusian state itself was constructed by the bolsheviks so that nothing would come of it. by the way, just like ukraine, ukraine is bigger. and then they were still in the soviet union for years the union did everything possible to bring it down to such a level angelica that when in 1953, after march 53, when stalin died, lavrov beria decided that he would gain popularity in the party circles of the republics of the union in order to then become stalin's heir, and he said that he wants the national cadres of the national representatives of their own nationalities to become the first secretaries of the interesting party of the union of

republics, and he, but then it was not like that, ukraine was ruled by the russians, the belarusians were handled by a russian. your delegation from the central committee of the communist party of the soviet union came to this place, took this belarusian before this, the first plan was this and brought him to minsk so that minsk, so that the belarusian communists elected a belarusian first with this interesting party of belarus for a russian and they, you know that april or june of the year 53, stalinism fear and they voted against, they turned out to be so bellicose to me that they did not even go to meet the central committee of kopares, they voted against belarus, they were not afraid, they were not afraid, they were against belarus because they all these members of the central committee of the communist party of belarus were russian chauvinists, and this is when bailey's downfall began, and you can imagine the level this national nihilism reached when they come to your plenum. that is, you are

in belarus, they tell you, please, let a belarusian communist lead the belarusian party organization. this there was mykhailo zimyanin - the future secretary of the central committee of the cpsu, well, who made a wonderful party career, a terrible party conservative , he was simply belarusian by origin, and she they say no, this is nationalism, we will not vote for it, belarus should not rule belarus. it is extremely strange for ukrainians, you can imagine what kind of disaster it is, but here, after all, they always tried to do the opposite . - in the end, not immediately, we always had opposition, we had a dissident, even the party apparatus was opposed. imagine if you are led by such a winnist party organization. how will you develop culture i would at least say a word. well, you know all these tragedies of yanka kupala, a great belarusian project. he died in moscow under

incomprehensible circumstances. well , he didn't do anything bad to the communists, you just annoyed him because he considered himself belarus. well, that's belarusian national history . much more complex than the history of ukraine and ukrainians for many. they also cannot call it luck, or can you say the luck of a people who were holodomors , yes, but a great nation and galicia, which was never part of the russian empire and when it ukrainians of halychyna transcarpathia, bukovyna met with ukrainians of the so-called big country well, of course they brought them this virus of a free attitude to national values, and belarus was not a group that became a part of belarus after uh, 39th year, you were the former russian empire which i was just in poland for a certain period of time for 20 years and that even now this territory is grodno and

it was and looks much more free even under this lukashenka press from the point of view of interest in national ideas you know hungry was the only city of its kind in my life where i heard people on the street and speaking in the belarusian language in the city. i followed them like oh, because i heard this belarusian language in the offices, in the editorial offices, i myself can speak the belarusian language, but it is not a language for of everyday use, you and i will now go out on the street after the broadcast and we will talk as if after the broadcast , that is, before this dialect we speak here, and from belarus it is not like that, even if you conduct a belarusian conditional program, you will most likely switch to the russian language on the streets of minsk and it's safer, easier, and that's how everyone talks, and there are n't many people who are ready to speak belarusian, and ivan knows them, and they face such situations. i would say bullying from the majority of my

compatriots. for as long as you know, i've tried all my life, i've always wanted it's like that my internal problem is not my own, my defeat is not mine. i always wanted a column in the belarusian language. i can write in the belarusian language and i did not succeed . everything ended in your belarusian language, so when i switched to russian, it turned out that there is no such audience. that is why i believe that it is the courage of people who continue to work in the belarusian language. that is, we are their colleagues from the belarusian service of radio liberty for other citizens, this is a big thing, but you understand that this is all well, it's not like we're talking about the problems that we have here at such a level, and we've never really had such an excursion into the history of belarus. i think for many people the dots have been put on why belarusians are not like us. with from the point of view of our opposition to ukraine, this is history

and the pressure of the empire in relation to lukashenka, i wanted to ask anyway, in your opinion, now belarus is not fully involved in the war with ukraine, but still allows russia to launch missiles from its territory there to use belarus as a military base, this indicates that that lukashenko is not personally ready or putin does not need it yet i think that he is not personally ready for putin of course putin needed it dear lika in time as they say in russia itself, but lukashenko of course he understands that as soon as his army starts fighting on the territory of ukraine. first of all , this is a different level of sanctions. 90% of belarus supports this war. putin can feel

much freer than lukashenko. he knows that he reflects the mood of the majority of these compatriots . lukashenka knows that he cannot provide a mirror. the country as a bridgehead because he disposes of this country as property, he can allow the russians to shell ukraine, but he absolutely does not know what will happen if real hostilities begin with the participation of the belarusian army, not even because it will not carry out the order, it will most likely do, but people will die the truth is that the belarusians may have a different reaction to the coffins that will leave ukraine, they will ask this lukashenka , and for what? yes drag him he is addicted yes anyway or just the mood is so good it's not hard it's hard to predict it's the same war it's not a prediction