More WION, Indian English-language television
Live broadcast on the rumored hospitalization in Moscow of Belarus President Lukashenko
It was a pleasure to participate in this morning’s Newspoint discussion program on WION, in which my fellow ‘panelist’ was Dr. Malcolm Davis, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra. Our task was to evaluate claims by a Belarus opposition leader that President Alexander Lukashenko is now in a critical condition in a Moscow hospital following a closed-door meeting with Vladimir Putin. It was further alleged by the Opposition that Lukashenko had possibly been poisoned by the Russians. The whole story is not yet in your morning’s New York Times, but in the U.K. it has been carried by The Mirror and The Daily Mail.
For those unfamiliar with this television channel, I note that they have 7.49 million subscribers. The show’s presenter was clearly on top of the situation and alert to openings in our remarks allowing him to dig deeper into questions and maintain a lively and relevant discussion of what to Indians is surely a rather exotic geopolitical news item.
The program is accessible by both youtube.com and twitter.