One puppeteer controls all puppets: US expert on who hinders friendship between America and Belarus

Michael Cunningham, Director of the Geography of Genocide Project at the Austin World Affairs Council (USA), shared his perspective on US-Belarus relations in the Spotlight Interview.

The interviewee has never been to Belarus, although he has been invited several times. However, due to his work investigating the genocide, he has had to meet with people from the Belarusian Ministry of Justice, and, as Michael Cunningham emphasized, he has never encountered such friendly, willing, and open people anywhere else.

"I think Belarus is like America in the 1880s. Belarus could have been very strong. The division between us is artificially created. I've never encountered this in my interactions with people. I have many friends from Armenia and other countries. They're deliberately pitting us against each other, without trying to understand that one puppeteer controls all the puppets and we argue about which puppet is better, but we don't realize we're in the same boat. I believe we should build much better relations with Belarus," said the director of the "Geography of Genocide" project at the World Affairs Council in Austin.

Indeed, the United States and Belarus share common history, such as World War II. However, the interviewee noted, history is taught incorrectly in America. Today, a young person there might not even know when World War II took place, much less that the USSR was invaded a year and a half before the United States entered it. "World War II is a sad situation because people allowed other people to commit monstrous crimes and go unpunished," Michael Cunningham emphasized.