Timothy Bell was a guest of \u201cGlavny Geroi\u201d (Main Hero) programme on Russian NTV channel on October 19.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Alyaksandr Lukashenka is considered to be a brutal politician in the West. What do you think about this?<\/p>\n
\u2013 He is a very open, resolute, very concentrated and very friendly man.<\/p>\n
\u2013 But western newspapers write absolutely different things…<\/p>\n
\u2013 The difference is that they haven\u2019t visited Belarus but I have.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Lukashenka was dubbed \u201cthe last dictator in Europe\u201d by Condoleezza Rice. Isn\u2019t it a verdict?<\/p>\n
\u2013 It is a stupid remark that everyone repeats. She should have visited Minsk and met with him, and not insulted him sight unseen.<\/p>\n
\u2013 It is said that he hired you not to make peace with the West but to preserve his power.<\/p>\n
\u2013 You are trying to engage me in complicated intellectual discussions, but I don\u2019t want it. Most Belarusians are glad and happy.<\/p>\n
\u2013 There is an opinion that this miracle is a result of cheap Russian oil and gas.<\/p>\n
\u2013 I am not an economist. You\u2019d better discuss this with Belarusian ministers.<\/p>\n
\u2013 By the way, can he call you?<\/p>\n
\u2013 He can if he wants.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Does he know your number?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Yes, I guess yes. He is a president and does whatever he wants. But I don\u2019t speak Russian, so we can\u2019t speak easily.<\/p>\n
\u2013 It is said it was your idea to present president\u2019s youngest son Kolya to public.<\/p>\n
\u2013 I have nothing to do with that.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Newspapers write you have…<\/p>\n
\u2013 Newspapers want both inform and entertain, but they a re always confusing the two things. Some write stupidity, the others are copying it.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Do you know about a letter of the Belarus Free Theatre?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Hardly.<\/p>\n
\u2013 It\u2019s a long letter, they wrote it to you! (Then goes a fragment of the letter, read out by the Free Theatre director Mikalai Khalezin: \u201cWe hope, you are an adult, Mr. Bell, and understand, that there is no such column as \u201cPR-technologies of Lord Bell\u201d with eight figures sum in the Belarusian budget\u201d).<\/p>\n
\u2013 I hope they enjoyed writing this. I am not interest in their opinion.<\/p>\n
\u2013 But this is opposition supported by the West!<\/p>\n
\u2013 These are people who decided to criticise the authorities. They wrote an insulting letter, juggling with facts. I am not going to begin a dialog with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cBelorusskie Novosti\u201d note that Brussels webportal EUObserver asked Lord Bell similar questions.<\/p>\n
According to Timothy Bell, the whole world judge Belarus by an \u201cimprovisation\u201d of Condoleezza Rice, though she has neither met president Lukashenka nor been in Belarus. \u201cWhen I go there, I mix perfectly happily with ordinary people. I see a country that has a perfectly nice atmosphere about it, people are very relaxed, people I talk to in hotels, bars and restaurants don’t keep looking over their shoulder. But it’s being described in the media in the way Ceausescu’s Romania was described,\u201d Lord Bell regrets. He admits he didn\u2019t make an effort to see what life is like outside central Minsk or to get to know the opposition and those who are suspected by Europe in violating human rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not a spokesman for the country,\u201d the famous PR man emphasised.<\/p>\n
Timothy Bell is talky in positive estimations of the Belarusian authorities: \u201cI have found them to be very hospitable, very pleasant to be with. The media description of Belarus and its administration has absolutely no relation with reality in my experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commenting on the recent parliamentary electoral campaign, Mr Bell said, \u201cI don’t think you measure the success of an election by the number of opposition candidates that are elected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking about his own role, he just noted that he steered the president\u2019s administration to give two high-profile interviews to the Financial Times and Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, while praising the \u201cpresident’s decision\u201d to be photographed at ballot boxes with his young son Kolya.<\/p>\n
According to Lord Bell, main duty of Bell Pottinger Group is to tell Minsk and its Brussels embassy how EU decision-making works and to channel messages about Belarus to key players inside the EU institutions. \u201cIt’s nothing to do with placing articles in newspapers. It’s about trying to ensure an accurate flow of information to the [European] Parliament, the [European] Commission and other key European figures,\u201d Lord Bell said.<\/p>\n
The PR man said he sees no conflict of interest in advising an anti-Kremlin figure Mr Berezovsky and Alyaksandr Lukashenka, a Kremlin ally…<\/p>\n
He described Belarus’ foreign relations approach as an \u201can extremely delicate situation\u201d, however. \u201cThey want to attract inward investment, want Belarusian people to travel freely, they would like the visa sanctions removed from their senior people so they can gain experience of other capitals. (…) He (Lukashenka) doesn’t want to make a choice between his friends in the east and his friends in the West,\u201d Lord Bell says.<\/p>\n
PR lord and Bell Pottinger Group have chosen a decent role for them \u2013 to tell about work and hospitality of the Belarusian authorities and use their professional skills to give this information to Brussels. The details of a contract with the Belarusian authorities, in particular, its cost, are kept in secret decently.<\/p>\n
Lord Bell doesn\u2019t sign impractical contacts. He probably really knows all secret ways to the heart of Europe and is ready to lead Belarus there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British PR-specialist Timothy Bell said in an interview to Russian media the Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka is \u201ca very friendly person\u201d, and \u201cmost Belarusians are glad and happy\u201d. According to the lord, he learnt this through speaking with common Belarusians \u201cin hotels, bars, and restaurants\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215624,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}