Notorious Propagandist-Lukashist Nina Chaika Dies

She was praising Lukashenka and participated in the smear campaign against Vasil Bykau.

Nina Chaika, a well-known former propagandist, has died at the age of 85. It happened on 9 February, as the pro-government Belarusian Union of Journalists informed. The message was published by some Russian media, but it went unnoticed in the Belarusian ones, writes Zerkalo.

Nina Chaika was born in Ussuriysk, Primorsky Krai, Russia, in the family of a military officer, who was transferred to Belarus after the Second World War. She graduated from the journalism department of the Belarusian State University and worked at the Belarusian Television and Radio Company for more than 50 years: first she headed youth editorial offices of radio, then television, and in the early 1990s she headed the editorial office of popular science and educational programmes on television, then - the editorial office of literary and dramatic programmes of the Belarusian Radio. In 2002-2008, Chaika was editor-in-chief of the ‘Nioman’ literary magazine, then deputy editor-in-chief of the ‘Union State’ magazine of ‘Belaya Vezha’ for almost three years.

In the nineties, Nina Chaika hosted an hour-long live programme ‘Talk on the merits’ on the ‘First National Channel’ radio, where she was praising Aliaksandr Lukashenka and criticising in every possible way people who disagreed with him. Among them the classic of Belarusian literature Vasil Bykau, who at that time actively supported the Belarusian Popular Front and opposed the authorities, and therefore became an object of harassment in the state media. This situation forced him to emigrate at an advanced age, and in 2003 Bykov died of cancer.

‘In 1992, ‘Krok’ and other programmes of the youth television editorial office, which in the late 80s gathered an audience of many millions due to their sharpness and democracy, turned into a mouthpiece of anti-independent, anti-Belarusian forces. Insults and mockery of the Belarusian language were heard from the screen, the very statehood of the Belarusian language was ridiculed, the right of Belarus to be a sovereign state was questioned. The editorial board was headed by Nina Chaika, a black supporter of the ‘Slavic Cathedral of Belaya Rus’. In the early 2000s she would become editor-in-chief of the Neman magazine, which would publish a vile text against Vasil Bykau, and I would witness in Prague how this publication would undermine Vasil's health in the last months of his life,’ wrote journalist Siarhei Naumchyk.

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