Upper house member arranges vacations in Minsk for children from Ukraine’s breakaway territories

January 8, BPN. The Council of the Republic, the upper house of the National Assembly, issued a statement on January 6 to praise Senator Dźmitryj Baskaŭ’s effort to support children from “the Donetsk and Luhansk republics.”

Baskaŭ, a former ice hockey goalkeeper with close ties to Alaksandr Łukašenka, reportedly participated in “a campaign by the [Paralympian] Alaksiej Tałaj Foundation’s to arrange for schoolchildren from the Donetsk and Luhansk republics to stay in Minsk during the winter school vacations.”

About 50 children from the self-proclaimed republics arrived in Minsk as part of the charity trip.

The Belarusian Ice Hockey Federation and Dinamo Minsk hockey club supported this initiative, it added.

Belarus doesn’t officially recognize Ukraine’s breakaway regions as independent states, but Łukašenka told AFP last July that Belarusian authorities “cooperated” with Russia-controlled Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea.