Oil

• Irina Khalip
• 15.08.2025, 17:09

Send it to the vinegar factory.

I had a classmate who could drink a glass of sunflower oil on a bet. He would say, "I'll bet you a dime that I'll drink it. And he'd drink it. A glass of sunflower oil overturned, he earned a tenner, and you could go to a restaurant or take a train to Tallinn. So the answer to the question of why to drink this nasty stuff was obvious.

But why Yabatki drink rapeseed oil in front of the camera, I can't understand. I can understand when they wave flags or sit at patriotic events giving the illusion of mass participation. But drinking rapeseed oil from the throat, to a recording, is beyond comprehension. And if the neighbors accidentally see the video? They'll laugh for the rest of their lives. And what if children living abroad look at their parents?

I watched this video, filmed at a margarine factory, where employees were forced to drink rapeseed oil under the slogan "support the initiative of the first!". No, these are not even yabatki - ordinary women from the workshops, in caps and white uniforms, that is, working not in the administration, but on the conveyor belt. And their faces are so sour that there is no doubt. A proforg or ideologist came and said: "Drink or we'll take away your bonus." And they drink. And they realize that at this moment they are doing something shameful - something that will be laughed at by the whole country. The plant probably needs subsidies, so the bosses thought up a way to show off, not just to bend and lick, but to attract attention. Now everyone knows that Lukashenko can count on the margarine factory, as there are reliable people in the management there. So when one of them will be jailed, as directors and producers should be jailed from time to time, it won't be for long. And they won't make them sell a kidney to pay off - they'll be satisfied with property and money, because they are their own people, reliable.

For this they are ready to eat rapeseed oil by the gallons. Moreover, Lukashenko has some kind of a painful habit: pouring oil into himself as if he were an old rusty door that needs urgent oiling of its hinges.

And every time Lukashenko pretends as if it's the first time it's happened to him. Just now, in Smolevichi district, he drank rapeseed oil and sincerely marveled at how refined and tasty it was, as if he had just tasted it for the first time. But three years ago he had been drinking rapeseed oil, flaxseed oil, and mustard oil all summer long. First, in June, he got on a "gazik" and drove to the rapeseed field in his native Alexandria. And there the table was already set with bottles and jars - as if rapeseed oil was growing right in the field for the joy of collective farmers. And Lukashenko, having touched a bottle, says: oh, it's delicious, but I thought it was bitter! Come on, Rygorych, you have known the taste of rapeseed oil for a long time. You drank it from your throat back in 2009.

In 2009 he came to "Grodnobioprodukt" and started drinking rapeseed oil. Then he passed it down the chain to the officials accompanying him and demanded that they drink it too. Lukashenko has such a habit (probably from childhood): to drool in the bottle and let it go around. At that time, the officials also obediently drank, and he said: "Don't drink too much, you'll get diarrhea. It was a joke, probably.

And even right before the protests began, on August 8, 2020, Lukashenko went to another collective farm, and drank oil there again (maybe for good luck?), and said that the best remedy for covida is rapeseed oil. He also said that it was necessary to teach people to use rapeseed oil as a medicine.

By the way, when a couple of years ago he drank mustard oil for a change, just like after drinking rapeseed oil, he drooled into the bottle and handed it to the closest official from the local staff with the order "Drink!". The latter, choking, drank. And every time Lukashenko pretends that he has never seen anything like this before and asks with genuine interest: "What can you fry with this oil? Can you fry potatoes? Then I'll come home now and fry them". The oil makers pretend to believe it. And Lukashenko pretends that he has not been drinking rape oil in liters until now.

I have a big request to Lukashenko's office: please plan a working trip to Slutsk vinegar factory. And gather a bigger delegation so that there would be someone to consume the product. I promise that all of us - both in Belarus and abroad - will join the screens, watch with inspiration and shout like ultras.

Irina Khalip, especially for Charter97.org.