This is evidenced by the survey data of the Ukrainian Sociological group "Rating": in April last year, only 4% of surveyed Ukrainians had a cold attitude towards Belarusians, in April 2022 - 33%, in August - 52%.

Yury Drakakhrust discussed the causes and consequences of such dynamics on the "Zerkalo" portal.

The data of "Rating" are close to the results obtained by another Ukrainian research center - the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).

In a May survey, 68% of Ukrainians reported that their attitude towards Belarusians had worsened since the start of the full-scale war.

However, at the same time, only 48% of the respondents said that they treat Belarusians badly, and 44% said that they treat Belarusians well.

48% of the positive attitude in the KMIS survey in May, 52% of the same attitude in "Rating" in August - these are practically the same indicators.

At first glance, the deterioration of the attitude after the first stage of hostilities is not entirely explainable.

In February-March, from the territory of Belarus, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers attacked the border regions of Ukraine, including Kyiv, and that was when the intensity of missile fire and air raids on Ukraine from Belarusian land was the highest.

Since the end of March, ground attacks on Ukraine from Belarus stopped, there was a pause in missile and airstrikes until June, when they resumed and continue to this day.

However, the threat is sometimes stronger than the execution.

Neither the statements of the Belarusian authorities, nor the information about the deployment of Russian troops and equipment in Belarus indicated that there will be no repeat of the attacks.

The cascade of exercises of the Belarusian armed forces in the regions bordering Ukraine, the aggressive anti-Ukrainian rhetoric of

and the Belarusian propaganda created a feeling of an ever-increasing threat among Ukrainians, and the threat not only of repeated Russian attacks, but also of the entry of the Belarusian army into the war.

Traditionally, Ukrainian sociologists record different attitudes to political issues in the east and west of the country.

According to the head of "Rating"

, in relation to Belarus and Belarusians, the watershed of assessments is different - north-south.

The closer the region of Ukraine is to the Belarusian border, the worse its relations with Belarusians are.

It is to these regions that Russian missiles flew and are flying from Belarusian land, it is to these regions that the first strike of the Russian, and maybe Belarusian, army will be made in the event of a new land invasion from the north.

In Belarus, the "enlightenment" explanation of the deterioration of the attitude of Ukrainians towards Belarusians is quite common. They say that the southern neighbors do not know and do not understand Belarus, for how many years Lukashenka was their most popular foreign politician.

This explanation is at least insufficient.

The masses are driven not so much by knowledge and reason as by passion and values.

This is true in peacetime, and even more so in wartime.

It is unlikely that residents of northern Ukraine are significantly less knowledgeable about the political vicissitudes of their northern neighbor than residents of southern Ukraine.

It's just that the sense of threat is stronger in the north, and it affects the attitude much more significantly than any knowledge or ignorance.

And the stronger the sense of threat, the worse the attitude towards the people inhabiting the land from which this threat comes.

The report on the August survey of "Rating" shows that middle-aged respondents - 36-51 years old - have a relatively warmer attitude towards Belarusians, while young people and elderly respondents have an almost equally cold attitude.

However, the differences are small and the balance of assessments is negative in all age groups.

According to the survey data, Russian-speaking Ukrainians treat Belarusians a little more warmly than Ukrainian-speaking ones, although the balance of assessments in both groups is negative.

Can we say that middle-aged and Russian-speaking Ukrainians know more about the 2020 protests in Belarus, about "rail partisans" and Kalinovsky's regiment, about dozens of Belarusians thrown behind bars for anti-war protests?

It does not follow from anything.

Knowledge or ignorance of the political realities of Belarus is definitely a factor that determines the attitude towards the northern neighbors, but it is not decisive.

The Belarusian army does not fight on Ukrainian soil - that is why the attitude towards Belarusians is better than towards Russians.

The streets of Belarusian cities are not littered with Z and V signs, famous Belarusian cultural figures do not declare their support for the "special military operation" - as a result, the attitude towards Belarusians is not as bad as it could be.

An interesting ratio of assessments in the May survey of KMIS: 68% said that their attitude towards Belarusians has worsened, but only 48% reported that they have a bad attitude.

That is, in the fifth part of Ukrainians it worsened, but not so much as to become bad.

The August, as well as the previous April, survey of "Rating" showed that the attitude of Ukrainians to Belarusians is better than to Russians, but worse than to the residents of the self-proclaimed "LPR" and "DNR" and Crimea.

Despite the fact that the inhabitants of these territories are fighting against Ukraine, and the Belarusian army is not.

But for the Ukrainian mass consciousness, these territories are occupied, and Belarus is not, in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk live in a certain sense their own, the same Ukrainians, and Belarusians are not their own and certainly not Ukrainians anymore.

These ideas are not universal, but they are dominant and they determine the attitude.

In Belarus, there is an opinion that the sharp deterioration of the attitude of Ukrainians towards Belarusians is explained by Kyiv's information policy, or simply speaking, Ukrainian propaganda.

But, first of all, the information agenda in Ukraine cannot be called focused on this issue.

Lukashenka's guilt is spoken about directly and unambiguously, the state of Belarus as a co-aggressor is also mentioned.

But in the question of the responsibility of the people, people, there is no such ambiguity - for every word about guilt there is a word about innocence, about anti-war sentiments in Belarus and in the Belarusian army as well.

And secondly, propaganda can reinforce attitudes, it always exploits them, but it does not create them.

And the primary in this case is the mass, popular attitude.

And its mechanism is simple and unchanged since the beginning of the existence of mankind: your tribe helps another to attack ours - you are to blame.

As we can see from the survey data, this attitude is not universal, but widespread.

According to the above-mentioned May poll of the Ukrainian National Institute of Social Sciences, 83% of Ukrainians consider Belarus to be an accomplice in the military conflict in Ukraine.

And the hate of Ukrainians against Belarusians on social networks is not only the work of Russian trolls, not only the outbursts of emotions of unbalanced users, it is also a reflection of a mass biracial attitude, and one that became biracial very quickly.

And Belarusians have different grades.

In the May survey of the Belarusian Analytical Workshop, 62% of Belarusians answered that their country is not a participant in the military conflict in Ukraine.

The motivations of such assessments are different - from "I will show you where in Ukraine they were preparing an attack on Belarus" to "Lukashenka is illegitimate, this is his war, Belarusians have nothing to do with it."

However, it is a fact that the answers of the two societies are almost mirror-opposite even to this "simple" question.

What to do in such a situation of conflict of mass consciousness of two peoples?

Perhaps the answer is not to stoke the fire of mutual hatred, not to spin the spiral of its escalation.

The current dislike of Ukrainians for Belarusians is unlikely to quickly return to former sympathies.

I think that the Belarusians are unlikely to overthrow Lukashenka and stop Russian aggression.

They are hardly even ready for universal repentance before Ukrainians.

But at least not to deepen the chasm between the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples is within everyone's power.

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