Belarus does not plan to close representations in the European Union (EU) in the near future, Foreign Minister Vladimir Makey said on Tuesday after a meeting on foreign policy issues with the country’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
“At this stage, we do not plan to close our foreign missions tomorrow, not in one or the other EU country. But, of course, we will follow the situation. We believe that the EU can be a normal partner for Belarus, but it needs to return to those sensible coexistence , which was in our relations some time ago, “the minister quoted the news agency” BelTA “as saying.
At a meeting on Tuesday, Lukashenko urged a serious review of the issue of Belarusian diplomatic missions in Europe.
“Why should we keep a bunch of diplomats there, if we don’t trade with them at all, but political relations, diplomacy … well, they just aren’t, it hurts the state,” the authoritarian leader explained at the meeting.
Belarus was taken over by mass protests, with hundreds of thousands of people outraged by the rigging of the results, following the August 9 presidential election, in which long-term President Lukashenko was once again the winner.
The protests were brutally suppressed by the authorities and gradually subsided by the winter.
Tens of thousands of people were detained during the protests. Hundreds of protesters were injured, but several were also killed.
Lukashenko’s rival Svyatlan Cihanouska, who the opposition believes is the real winner of the election, was forced to leave the country. Most of the other opposition leaders are also in prison or exile.
Belarus has once again caused global outrage by forcing the landing of a Ryanair-Athens flight in Minsk on May 23 to detain opposition journalist Roman Protasevich. Along with Protasevic, his girlfriend Sofia Sapega was detained.
The West has imposed sanctions on dozens of individuals and organizations in Belarus in connection with the brutal repression of the opposition following last year’s rigged presidential election.
Sanctions were tightened after the incident with Ryanair.
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