Russian Propagandist Visits Minsk to Launch a News Portal

Yes­ter­day, Dmitri Kise­ly­ov met the For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Uladz­imir Makey, and today, in the House of Moscow, he has giv­en a press con­fer­ence. The Belaru­sian Infor­ma­tion Min­is­ter Liliya Ananich also took part in the event.

“We have worked in Belarus for a long time, and today we launch a new space (the Belaru­sian por­tal Sput­nik is part of the Rossiya Today), said Dmitri Kise­ly­ov. “The aims of its pres­ence here in Belarus do not dif­fer from the aims all over the world – to shape a just image of Rus­sia. We do not sep­a­rate us from the broth­er­ly Belaru­sian nation. We want us to have a pos­si­bil­i­ty to devel­op with­out ham­pers from the out­side,” he said.

Liliya Ananich said that there was a plan being devel­oped of a joint infor­ma­tion­al space of the Union State.

A jour­nal­ist of Nasha Niva addressed a ques­tion to Dmitri Kise­ly­ov. Around 135 crim­i­nal cas­es have been launched in Belarus against its cit­i­zens who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the fight­ing in Ukraine; one of the accused says in an inter­view to NN.by that he went to fight for the DNR hav­ing been influ­enced by pro­grams of the Rus­sia TV chan­nel. 9000 peo­ple have died in Ukraine, so does Dmitri Kise­ly­ov feel blame for those per­ished peo­ple, won­dered the jour­nal­ist.

Dmitri Kise­ly­ov said he did not feel blame for the coup, for clus­ter bomb­ings of peace­ful pop­u­la­tion and for the waged civ­il war. He also added that the cor­re­spon­dent of Nasha Niva had a mess in the head.

Respond­ing to the ques­tion about Putin’s off-shores to the Radio Svabo­da, Kise­ly­ov poured crit­i­cism claim­ing that Svabo­da was doing dirty jour­nal­ism to which Rossiya Segod­nya is opposed. Gen­er­al­ly, he “trusts the pres­i­dent”.

The Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Liliya Ananich remarked that the main thing is that jour­nal­ism should stay hon­est and unbi­ased because in the times of the Inter­net, the truth any­way will come to the sur­face. Some­body will not write, some­body else will, she said.

Dmitri Kise­ly­ov is also con­vinced that the image of Belarus in the West is made up of stamps, prim­i­tive images, and the por­tal will pro­mote its pos­i­tive image. He does not see signs of infor­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da wars in Belarus and Rus­sia. “We are not pro­pa­gan­dists, he said, “these are the US who make infor­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da wars.”

As Bela­PAN news agency quotes Liliya Ananich, the new cen­ter “will hold events con­tribut­ing to devel­op­ment of mul­ti-aspect infor­ma­tion­al projects, inte­gra­tional ties between Belarus and Rus­sia.” “Infor­ma­tion from Belarus will be avail­able in many-many coun­tries, hon­est, open and aimed to cre­ation of friend­ship between Belarus and Rus­sia, coop­er­a­tion, build­ing up mul­ti-polar world. We wel­come such approach­es,” she remarked.

Rossiya Segod­nya was set up in 2013 by Vladimir Putin’s edict on the basis of RIA Novosti. Its cor­re­spon­dent point was accred­it­ed in Belarus at the end of 2014, and soon the Sput­nik news project was launched.

Информагентство «Россия сегодня» открыло в Минске мультимедийный пресс-центр Sput­nik