Belarus’ foreign minister still furious after EU snub

November 22, Pozirk. Belarusian Foreign Minister Maksim Ryžankoŭ unleashed bouts of fiery rhetoric directed against the European Union after his meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Brest today.

Irregular migration for Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania is an opportunity to “inflate their political or economic bubble,” he said, alluding to the neighbors’ refusal to send their representatives to the November 15 Minsk conference on illegal migration.

These countries show no interest in discussing the issue with Minsk, he said. Instead, they try to present themselves as “defenders,” get EU funding and “embezzle this money,” he added.

However, he noted that some countries are ready to discuss migration with Minsk, apparently referring to the presence of UK and Hungarian diplomats at the event.

“In fact, certain circles did show up. It means that countries of the so-called deep or old Europe are putting out feelers; for them, the illegal migration problem is a serious problem,” he was quoted as saying by the foreign ministry.

The conference took place in Minsk on November 15, with only two Western diplomats—a British embassy official and the Hungarian ambassador— in attendance.

The Belarusian foreign minister might have been angered by the West’s refusal to engage.
He went on to attack the West.

Behind European politicians’ declarations of democracy are “quite undemocratic mechanisms of achieving a certain goal, ultimately through violence, murder, and damage to infrastructure and specific people, and eventually with lower welfare, living standards, and the overall social order” in Belarus and Russia, he said.

“What won’t they do to gain power here and force the Belarusian people to go with the flow of the collective West’s political and economic aspirations?” Ryžankoŭ questioned, accusing neighbors of training “terrorists” to invade Belarus.

He said that the Belarusian and Russian foreign offices have designed a joint strategy to counter Western sanctions by using international legal mechanisms.

The diplomats also discussed “the legal aggression” directed against Belarus and Russia from Western-controlled legal institutions.

Ryžankoŭ and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signed a Belarusian-Russian declaration emphasizing the role of international law in qualifying unilateral sanctions as illegal and a document titled A Common Vision of the Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century, the Belarusian foreign ministry said.

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