Russian-Belarusian Relations in the West European Media

This work is devoted to the analysis of history of relations between two neighboring countries - the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, in order to identify the main aspects of description of Russian-Belarusian relations in Western European media. In this work it's defined the chronological frames of the study, it's selected and ranked by language character the list of Western European media involving quantitative methods and using the programs of graphic representation of results of calculation of frequency of use of words and terms in the analyzed materials, it is identified and analyzed the main aspects in the representation of Russian-Belarusian relations by Western European media. The results of calculation of frequency of the use of certain words and concepts in the selected texts made it possible to determine the following pairs of concepts, which characterize the Russian-Belarusian interrelations: "Russia-Belarus" and "Putin-Lukashenko". It's a characteristic feature that in many cases on the background of the dominance of quantitative measure of use of the concept of "Russia" over the same indicator for "Belarus", in the pair of "Lukashenko"-"Putin" it is turned out to be a dominant quantitative measure of mentions of family name of Belarusian leader. For many European journalists the Russian government turns out to be depersonalized, as well as the attention can be paid to the use of the concept of "Kremlin" for the description of the actor and the source of foreign policy decisions. The government in Belarus is personalized, which is manifested in a high quantitative measure of frequency of mentions of the family name of Lukashenko. In conclusion, it can be said that an important factor which affected both the perception by European media of the figure of Lukashenko, as well as the perception of Russian-Belarusian interrelations, is the Ukrainian conflict and the personal role played by the Belarusian leader in the affair of peace process.