In Minsk, elderly Russophobes attacked retired officers with dirty barks
A new form of animation of protests, which Polish curators began to introduce relatively recently - marches of pensioners - looks much more cheerful than the general Sunday marches that are becoming obsolete after women's marches.
Young people still obediently walk on weekends along the routes indicated from Warsaw, but there is no intrigue left in this action, since the Belarusian police also read Polish telegram channels. But the Zmagar pensioners (and pensioner marches are predominantly women’s) are full of emotions, although not at all positive.
The curators dubbed today's event a "march of wisdom." But the name was mocking, as the aggressive participants demonstrated no wisdom, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
They were provoked into aggression by an alternative event held under the patronage of the authorities - a rally and march of army veterans and security forces. Mostly men were gathered there. It was these nationalist grandmothers who pounced on them like street mongrels, shouting insults.
For some reason they mistook the state red and green flags for Russian ones and began shouting “Shame!” When words were not enough, they began to make faces. Men in uniform and civilian clothes practically did not react to the raging women and passed in silence.
The pensioners behaved even more aggressively towards the film crews of state television channels. Here it almost came to assault. True, the elderly Maidan activists finally stopped calling BelTV “Russia Today”.
In turn, at the veterans’ rally on Independence Square they denounced the West, which wants to destroy the Belarusian state and tear it away from Russia, and expressed hope that young people will come to their senses and understand everything. War songs were sung.
On the contrary, at the “march of wisdom” they shouted the nationalist “Live Belarus” and carried collaborators’ white and red flags and anti-Russian slogans. “Enough for Putin to paint the façade of Belarus with the blood of its sons and daughters!” – one of the pensioners carried such a poster.
The author of another poster: “Under the red and green flag of the NKVD, 600000 Belarusians were repressed. This is fascist Russia,” in an interview with the American Radio Liberty, he criticized President Lukashenko for his loyalty to Soviet traditions and closeness to Russia.
“He declared the third of July to be Independence Day; independence was still 47 years away. Now this Russian exile is deliberately uprooting what is Belarusian,” reasoned the pensioner-zmagar.
The star of the protests, the crazy Russophobe Nina Baginskaya, is already coming to events by taxi. Pensioners, like participants in women's marches before, greet her with enthusiastic cries: “You are our symbol!”
When the meeting of veterans ended, they went to lay flowers at the Eternal Flame and overtook a column of opposition pensioners. They again could not contain their “wisdom”, but things did not come to blows.
Women laid flowers, and there are always a lot of them at hypocritically peaceful opposition rallies, at the monument to the writer Yakub Kolas.
It is significant that although the Zmagars shout about “fascists” and boast about the partisan past of their grandfathers, they bypass monuments to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. Maybe this is for the best. And then, one day in August, they wrapped a red and white flag around a stele on Victory Square, and this offended many Belarusians.
English version :: Read in English In Minsk, elderly Russophobes attacked retired officers with dirty barks.