Posts by Dr. Kiryl Kascian

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 210 (June 14, 2026)

by Kiryl Kascian

An article titled “Coloniality by proxy: Albania’s road to Brussels runs through Tel Aviv” appeared in my social media feed a few days ago. Under normal circumstances, it would have been easy to skip. The contemporary pro-Palestinian analytical genre has become highly predictable. This narrative usually affirms Israel’s right to exist at the level of principle, as a matter that cannot be publicly contested, while simultaneously interpreting its actions in a way that places that legitimacy under constant moral exception. Within this interpretative framework, Israel increasingly occupies a rather exceptional position. Few other states are discussed so consistently through the language of structural suspicion. Military actions that would elsewhere be analyzed within the framework of security dilemmas, strategic calculation, or asymmetric warfare are instead frequently interpreted through morally predetermined categories such as settler colonialism, racial hierarchy, or systems of domination. The result is not simply criticism of Israeli policy, which is entirely legitimate in itself, but a tendency to treat Israeli actions as requiring a different moral grammar altogether. The events of October 7 and the security reality that followed are acknowledged, yet often pushed into the analytical background with remarkable speed.

What made me click, however, was a reference at the beginning of the text to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and his state visit to Jerusalem in January 2026. That detail briefly interrupted my usual reading filter, mainly because Rama was one of the keynote speakers at the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism. I attended that event and heard his speech in person. That memory was the only reason I kept reading the article to the end. Somewhat unexpectedly, it turned out to be worth it.

The more revealing material appeared only at the very last paragraph. There, the authors argued that Albania’s relations with Israel should be understood primarily through “the role that Western geopolitical expectations have prescribed for it,” claiming that Tirana views the Palestinian cause as “an inconvenient variable to be managed, minimized, and ultimately ignored on the road to Brussels.” In this interpretation, Albania was not acting as a sovereign political actor making its own strategic calculations. Instead, it appeared as a small state adjusting itself to the demands of Euro-Atlantic integration. At that very final point, the article stopped being merely another exercise in post-colonial critique and began to resemble something familiar from an entirely different geopolitical register.

Anyone familiar with Russian strategic communication toward Eastern Europe, particularly the Baltic states and Ukraine, will recognize the similarities almost immediately. For years, Russian official discourse has consistently promoted the claim that smaller states pursuing policies critical towards Russia, especially those aligned with NATO or the European Union, do not possess fully authentic sovereignty. Their policies are portrayed as externally generated and their governments less as independent political actors than as transmission belts for decisions made somewhere within the so-called “collective West.”

One of the main figures articulating this narrative is Maria Zakharova, the longtime spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry. In her public appearances and press briefings, Zakharova routinely contrasts what Moscow calls the “collective West” with the so-called “world majority.” The latter is presented as a broad community of states supposedly committed to sovereign decision-making and a multipolar international order, in contrast to a West portrayed as increasingly ideological, hegemonic, and detached from the rest of the world. Within this framework, Russia positions itself not as an isolated power, but as part of a larger global coalition resisting Western political and moral dominance.

The vocabulary of Russian propaganda and contemporary post-colonial discourse is obviously different, but the underlying logic feels strangely familiar. The Kremlin usually speaks more directly about puppets, proxies, and externally controlled regimes. Contemporary post-colonial discourse prefers the language of hegemonic structures, normative pressure, and systems of domination. Still, both tend to arrive at a fairly similar conclusion when small states are treated as genuinely sovereign mainly when they position themselves against the West.

Once countries align themselves with NATO, the EU, the United States, or Israel (which, by most geopolitical standards, is itself a rather small state), their political agency suddenly becomes questionable. Their decisions are no longer seen as fully their own because somebody larger and more powerful must supposedly be acting through them. The irony here is difficult to miss. In The Plague, Albert Camus wrote that “the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good.” He was writing about more than disease. Certain political reflexes survive in much the same way. They simply return under different vocabularies and moral fashions. A discourse presenting itself as anti-imperial gradually reproduces a logic very similar to the one through which Moscow has spent years denying political agency to Eastern Europe altogether. This overlap is probably not entirely accidental because both contemporary post-colonial rhetoric and Russian geopolitical discourse seem uncomfortable with the possibility that smaller nations may voluntarily align themselves with the broader Western sphere for reasons of history, security, or simple political preference.

In both frameworks, sovereignty becomes conditional. It is acknowledged when exercised against the West and questioned when exercised alongside it. That is precisely why the final paragraph of the Albanian article turned out to be far more revealing than the rest of its fairly predictable criticism of Israel. Or, to borrow from Leonard Cohen, “there is a crack in everything.” In this case, the crack appears precisely at the point where anti-imperial language begins unconsciously reproducing imperial assumptions of its own.

Dr. Kiryl Kascian is Head of the Centre for Communication Influences and Propaganda Research, Faculty of Communication of Vilnius University, Lithuania, kiryl.kascian@kf.vu.lt

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 192 (March 23, 2026)

Belarus is an unusual place to consider in the context of the Middle East. Three Israeli presidents were born there, while Belarus itself has had only one president since independence. The Aliaksandr Lukashenka regime in Minsk is well aware of this historical connection and sometimes references it as another convenient talking point rather than a foundation for genuine engagement. Thus, this awareness does not translate into any meaningful support for Israel in its current struggles. The current war in Iran is framed by the Lukashenka administration and its state media through the familiar lens of anti-Western rhetoric and selective moral posturing. Yet, their narratives are somewhat different from that of the Kremlin.

Belarus and Iran maintain steady diplomatic and political ties that have grown somewhat closer in recent years, often framed by both governments as a shared response to Western sanctions. High-level contacts are not uncommon. For example, in August 2025 Aliaksandr Lukashenka hosted Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Minsk, where the two sides discussed expanding cooperation and signed a package of agreements covering areas from industry and technology to tourism and defense-technical cooperation. Pezeshkian remarked during the talks that the two countries share “common positions and views on issues of global importance,” while Lukashenka responded in similar terms, assuring his guest that Iran “has been and remains our friend” and that Belarus intends to fulfill its commitments. The Iranian side also pointed to practical areas where this alignment might develop, including economic and cultural exchanges as well as military-technical cooperation. Pezeshkian noted that Iran has lived under Western sanctions for more than four decades. Belarus, for its part, has also been subject to Western restrictions for many years. In this sense, the language of cooperation between the regimes in Minsk and Tehran is not only about trade or diplomacy but also reflects a broader political narrative in which sanctions are presented less as a constraint than as a reason for closer partnership.

Since the launch of the operations Epic Fury by the United States and Roaring Lion by Israel, the Lukashenka regime reacted just as one would expect. Under Lukashenka and especially after 2020, the Belarusian political scene does not really produce anyone with his kind of media presence or authority in foreign policy. The rest are mostly background players whose role is to echo the main line and occasionally decorate it with institutional language.

On March 2, at the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council, Belarus’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, Larysa Belskaya, addressed the situation in Iran. There is a certain irony in the setting because the UNHRC has long shown a persistent obsession with the Jewish State. Belskaya followed the usual diplomatic script, expressing concern over the escalation and calling for political and diplomatic solutions. But a closer look reveals some interesting phrasing. She cited the UN Charter and emphasized that the use of force against the “political independence” of a state is prohibited. She went on to describe the U.S. and Israeli actions as “interference under the pretext of so-called human rights protection,” following years of sanctions and culminating in armed aggression. The words “so-called” carry a lot of weight there. She also stressed that “any use of force against the leadership of a sovereign state” is unacceptable. It sounds like a defense of international rules, but really it’s just a rigid regime worrying about keeping another regime and its leadership safe.

On March 4, Lukashenka met with the Iranian ambassador to Belarus, Alireza Sanei, and expressed his solidarity with the regime in Tehran. He claimed that wars are “simply genetically unacceptable for us,” because Belarus, being at the center of many major conflicts, knows their cost all too well. He obviously implied the devastation of World War II, which affected nearly every Belarusian family and claimed over two million lives, including up to 800,000 local Jews. A Belarus-centric reflection on this history makes clear to anyone with a sense of empathy why Israel is based on the principle of “never again” and why it fights desperately to defend itself against those who deny its right to exist. Instead, Lukashenka called Israel’s actions a “treacherous attack” and turned to the personality of the killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He recalled meeting Khamenei a few times and described him as a “humanist” more focused on protecting his people than on military matters. He insisted that the harm done to Khamenei and his family, including the death of his wife from her wounds, was “absolutely unacceptable.” Khamenei spent decades calling for the destruction of Israel, presenting the Jewish State as an enemy that must eventually be eliminated. He has ruled a regime that represses dissent and punishes those who challenge its authority. In the political vocabulary of regimes like those in Minsk and Tehran, “humanism” often seems to mean loyalty to one’s own power and solidarity with fellow rulers under pressure from the outside. Yet one basic question remains: how exactly can a “humanist” describe another country as a “cancerous tumor” and repeatedly call for its eradication?

On 9 March, Lukashenka congratulated Mojtaba Khamenei on taking over as Iran’s supreme leader after his father. In his message, he expressed confidence that Iran would continue defending its independence, maintaining internal stability, preserving its ideological and cultural foundations, and strengthening its international position under the new leadership. Lukashenka also underlined the importance he attaches to Belarus’s partnership with Tehran and signaled interest in expanding contacts and cooperation at all levels. Behind the familiar diplomatic phrasing, the logic is fairly clear. What matters for Minsk is that the system in Tehran remains intact. It is run by people with similar political instincts who view Western pressure as a reason to stand together.

On 13 March Lukashenka again commented on the situation around Iran. On the surface little sounded new. He claimed that the United States and Israel had failed to achieve their goals and presented his own position as “careful,” “balanced,” and “humane.” At the same time he made it clear that Belarus had no intention of becoming involved in the conflict in any way that might create problems for itself. In practice this means rhetorical solidarity with Tehran while keeping Belarus well away from any real political risk.

Yet some of his wording deserves attention. While describing the situation Lukashenka remarked that “the Americans and Jews have already created so many problems for themselves there.” In this context “Jews” is not an acknowledgment of Israel’s Jewish character. It reflects a familiar rhetorical shortcut from (post-)Soviet political slang, where criticism of Israeli policy slides easily into something more suggestive once the line between a state and a people becomes conveniently blurred.

A similar pattern appears when Lukashenka recalls Israel’s operation in Gaza with the phrase “Children… everything is in disarray, there is no living thing left there.” The image is vivid, but the context totally disappears. There is no mention of 7 October, the massacre that started the war, or of the fact that Israel is fighting Hamas, which openly calls for its destruction. For an audience accustomed to state propaganda the picture is simple enough. Israel appears as the source of chaos while the circumstances that forced it to act remain outside the frame.

This narrative collides with realities familiar to many Belarusians. A large number have relatives, friends, or professional contacts in Israel and receive first-hand accounts that differ from the official picture. Belarusian historical memory also includes an awareness of the significant role Jewish communities played in the country’s social and cultural life. Yet in public rhetoric the regime continues to present the conflict in a way that rhetorically aligns with Tehran and fits the broader anti-Western narrative, while the main priority remains the same as always, preserving its own system at home.

Dr. Kiryl Kascian is Head of the Centre for Communication Influences and Propaganda Research, Faculty of Communication of Vilnius University, Lithuania, kiryl.kascian@kf.vu.lt