The People’s Anti-Crisis Management has published a report titled “Battle for Belarus”, посвящённый политике режима по вытеснению беларусской культуры и продвижению нарративов “Russian World”. It was presented at a side event of the spring session of PACE in April 2026.
The authors draw a parallel between developments in Belarus after 2020 and processes in the occupied territories of Ukraine, with the difference that in Belarus this occurs on a more concealed scale. The mechanism is triggered through denunciations by pro-Russian pseudo-activists, which are then picked up by propagandists and security forces.
The report identifies several направления этой “battle”. In the field of literature, leading independent publishers have been eliminated, and books by classical and contemporary authors have been added to lists of “extremist materials”.
In historical policy, monuments to national heroes are being dismantled while monuments to Russian figures are being installed, in particular to Aleksandr Nevsky in Minsk. Editors of the Belarusian Wikipedia are being repressed, and Russia and Belarus are preparing unified history textbooks.
In education, the share of first-grade students in Minsk studying in the Belarusian language has fallen from 58% in 1994 to 5% today.
In culture, attacks on cultural projects, the closure of exhibitions and festivals, and the Russification of theatres are being recorded.
As countermeasures, the authors propose creating an online national education system accredited in the EU, carrying out large-scale digitisation of archives and libraries on secure servers, and supporting cultural figures and language schools in the diaspora.
The full version of the report is available at the link.
