PARIS (Reuters) – Russia’s lack of reaction to Belarus’ decision to force a plane to land on Sunday in order to arrest an opponent on board “is worth caution”, Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Wednesday.
“Russia’s lack of reaction is worthy of caution,” the French Foreign Minister said on France 2.
“If by any chance President (Russian Vladimir) Putin wanted to distance himself from President (Belarusian Alexander) Lukashenko, he would do so. On the contrary, it seems that we are trivializing this event, which is a very serious event.”
For Jean-Yves Le Drian, through the incident of the weekend and its repercussions, it is in particular ideological complicities between Minsk and Moscow – including “authoritarianism” and the “will to kill civil society” – which ” occur”.
While the leaders of the Twenty-Seven, gathered at the beginning of the week in Brussels for a European council, decided on Monday on new sanctions against Minsk by isolating it from air traffic, the French minister defended measures he deemed ” very significant “.
The ban on entering European airspace, “it is a very strong measure,” said Jean-Yves Le Drian, specifying that “in these cases you have to touch the wallet.”
Beyond the Belarusian issue, the leaders of the Twenty-Seven also debated on Tuesday the relationship between the European Union (EU) and Russia and “condemned the illegal, provocative and destabilizing Russian activities against the ‘EU, its Member States and others’, reaffirming the EU’s solidarity and support to its Eastern European partners.
Judging that Europe has undoubtedly arrived “at a moment of truth in (its) relationship with Russia”, a neighbor “sometimes unbearable”, Jean-Yves Le Drian judged that the “clarification” demanded by the The EU would probably be on the agenda for the talks between Vladimir Putin and United States President Joe Biden in mid-June in Switzerland.
But after what just happened in Belarus, “I’m not sure (that) President Putin is coming in from a position of strength.”
Minsk forced a Ryanair plane to land in order to arrest 26-year-old dissident journalist Roman Protassevich, an incident that prompted Western powers to isolate Belarus from air traffic.
(Bertrand Boucey and Myriam Rivet)
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