Regnum publishes interview with Alexievich without permission

The Russian information agency Regnum has published an interview with Svetlana Alexievich without her consent.  The Nobel Prize laureate did not expect to be asked provocative questions.  Alexievich called the journalist’s statement about a coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 absurd. “It was people’s desire to change the government,” she noted. However, the Regnum journalist would not calm down and kept insisting on ‘a coup d’état’. “When Ukrainians started protecting their country, you mentioned human rights that were not observed at war. You, Russians, behaved even worse in Chechnya,” the writer said.

Then they discussed the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. Alexievich recalled the Russification and elimination of the Belarusian intellectual elite in the Soviet time and the 3 million Russians that came to Belarus after the WWII. Russia wants to absorb Ukraine and our country by means of Russification, she believes. Svetlana Alexievich touched upon the problems of freedom in modern Russia and the journalists did not like it. He asked her why she would not go to Donets Basin since she was writing about war. Russia was directly involved in the conflict in East Ukraine and “it is on Putin’s conscience”, Alexievich stressed.

“You invaded another country, why?” the writer asked. “There are millions of photos of Russian military machines there. Everyone knows who took down [that plane] and all this. Let us stop this stupid interview. I haven’t the energy for it. You are just a collection of propaganda, not a reasonable person.”