from Sepia@mander.xyz to world@lemmy.world on 18 Feb 08:53
https://mander.xyz/post/47630503
cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/47629114
The Belarusian opposition leader claims Russia and Belarus are promoting a fringe historical theory that could be used by President Putin to justify a future invasion.
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Russia and Belarus are behind the sudden revival of an obscure historical conspiracy theory that challenges the foundations of Lithuania’s nationhood, according to the leader of the Belarusian opposition.
There are concerns that the suspected propaganda campaign might furnish President Putin with a specious argument for a military incursion, along similar lines to his notorious essay on the “unity” of Russia and Ukraine.
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Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the figurehead of the Belarusian democratic movement, said the dictatorial regimes in Moscow and Minsk had begun whipping up a long-dormant fringe notion that the medieval Lithuanian empire had actually been Slavic, and so large parts of Lithuania belonged to Belarus.
“It was very marginal in Belarusian society. Nobody ever discussed this,” she said. “But they are artificially promoting this idea, trying to sow this perception among Lithuanians that Belarusians are a threat to them. And it really works.”
Until 2020, Tsikhanouskaya, a 43-year-old former English teacher, was a stay-at-home mother whose husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, abruptly became a prominent protest leader and challenged Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president and close ally of Putin, at the ballot box.
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#world
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