Among friends, Lukashenko is growing | He met …

Belarusian President Alexandr Lukashenko today accused the West of trying to destabilize the situation in the former Soviet republic by meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, alluding to the harsh European response to the hijacking of a Ryanair commercial plane to Minsk. “There is an attempt to destabilize the situation up to the levels of August of last year,” he said at the start of his meeting with Putin in the spa resort of Sochi (Black Sea), referring the outbreak of anti-government protests after the fraudulent presidential elections.

“What our Western friends are looking for is very clear. But there are no heights that the Bolsheviks did not take. And we will take them too,” said the Belarusian leader. Visibly nervous Lukashenko showed his Russian counterpart a briefcase containing “some documents” on the plane incident on May 23, which led to the arrest of opposition journalist Roman Protasevich and his partner Sofía Sapega . “So that he understands what happened. So that he understands what kind of people they are,” he said.

He also criticized the European Union for punishing state-owned airline Belavia with the closure of its airspace, arguing that the company had nothing to do with the incident with the Ryanair flight, which covered the Athens- route. Vilnius. “Why are they punishing the Belavia team? They have nothing to do with it. They gave them everything! There, they showed their true face,” he said.

For his part, Putin recalled the incident that occurred in 2013 when Austria, at the request of the United States, forced the plane in which Bolivian President Evo Morales was in to land, suspected that the former analyst of CIA Edward Snowden was on board. “They lowered the plane of the president of Bolivia. They took the president out of the plane and nothing: silence,” he said. Russia has defended Minsk’s actions from the start, criticized the sanctions adopted by the EU and considers the case of Protasevich, arrested after Lukashenko hijacked the plane to Minsk on the grounds that there was an alert to the bomb on board, is an internal matter.

Lukashenko, criticized since August 2020 for fraud in the presidential elections and repression of anti-government demonstrations, intervened in an extraordinary manner in front of both chambers of Parliament and delivered a fiery speech in which he responded with threats of European sanctions. He claimed he had acted to protect the safety of Belarusians and called it a “total lie” that the MiG-29 fighter he ordered to be lifted into the air forced the Ryanair plane to land.