Polish MFA Ends Contract with Belsat

“We are will­ing to dis­cuss it with an expe­ri­enced team of Bel­sat how to change the medi­um to enable it to find a prop­er donor and gain the pres­tige of an impor­tant medi­um of Belaru­sian com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The ear­li­er con­tract between MFA and TVP on the cre­ation of Bel­sat TV has already been ter­mi­nat­ed,” wrote in Rzecz­pospoli­ta Marek Ziółkows­ki, Deputy Sec­re­tary on secu­ri­ty and East­ern Euro­pean pol­i­cy of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs.

In his arti­cle, Marek Ziółkows­ki ana­lyzes devel­op­ments in diplo­mat­ic rela­tions between Poland and Belarus and gen­er­al­ly Poland’s activ­i­ties to pro­mote cul­ture of its own and of its East­ern neigh­bor. The politi­cian con­firms that the Pol­ish Gov­ern­ment expects to agree upon retrans­mis­sion of the Pol­ish-lan­guage TVP Polo­nia chan­nel in Belarus cable nets.

On Jan­u­ary 25, in War­saw Marek Ziółkows­ki met with the Belaru­sian Ambas­sador to Poland Ali­ak­san­dr Aviaryanau. Cur­rent­ly, a del­e­ga­tion from the Belaru­sian Par­lia­ment is vis­it­ing the Pol­ish Par­lia­ment; the vis­it is to end on Feb­ru­ary 2.

The satel­lite chan­nel Bel­sat stays with­in the Pol­ish TVP. Since its launch in 2007, its cost com­prised 157 mil­lion zlo­ty (exchange rate rang­ing from 2 to 4 ZL for USD), which makes a third of all funds allo­cat­ed by Poland to sup­port democ­ra­cy in Belarus, reports the Radio Svabo­da.

First rumors of the “clo­sure of Bel­sat TV” appeared unex­pect­ed­ly in mid-Decem­ber 2016 from the chief of Bel­sat Agniesz­ka Romaszews­ka. She said then that the essen­tial cut down on the channel’s bud­get – by two thirds – would mean that the chan­nel would not make it. The inter­view brought about a mas­sive response from the audi­ence. On Jan­u­ary 5, Agniesz­ka Romaszews­ka wrote on her Face­book page that the Pol­ish Prime Min­is­ter Bea­ta Szy­dło had reas­sured the channel’s direc­tor that there was no threat to its exis­tence. The channel’s des­tiny was sup­posed to be resolved with­in a month.

On Jan­u­ary 1, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Bel­sat in Belarus Ali­ak­sei Min­chonak replied to some ques­tions in an online con­fer­ence at BAJ. In par­tic­u­lar, he told that the audi­ence of Bel­sat TV was around 4% of the whole pop­u­la­tion, and there was prob­a­bil­i­ty that some pro­grams would be fur­ther in Russ­ian.