MINSK, 16 February (BelTA) – Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei began his press conference with a quip about the failed Ukraine invasion predictions in Western media, BelTA has learned.
The minister began the press conference by mentioning the reports in various Western media outlets on the attack against a neighboring country from the territory of Belarus that was supposed to start on 16 February. "We invited you [for the press conference] two weeks in advance because we learned everything in advance. And we will discuss it now," the minister joked.
The level of information confrontation in the world has gone off the charts, Vladimir Makei said. “In all their earnest your colleagues make daily doom and gloom reports about, for example, a war against a neighboring state, and no one bears any responsibility for this."
"The saddest thing is that many politicians around the world make serious decisions on the basis of this deliberate disinformation. This, unfortunately, has become a new normal today. This is a dangerous trend," he stressed.
When conversing with journalists, the minister noted that he does not share the doom and gloom attitudes whipped up around Ukraine and the Allied Resolve 2022 exercise. "I was absolutely sure that there would be no invasion of Ukraine from the territory of Belarus. Indeed, no one is safe from provocations. But you should take note where all this hysteria is coming from. You need to look deeper, at the root cause, namely Russia's seizing the initiative on regional, international security," he said referring, in particular, to Russia's written proposals on security guarantees. The minister believes that the proposals addressees could not ignore them, yet they could not accept them either. "Therefore, by whipping up the hysteria, information terrorism, as Sergey Lavrov [Russian Foreign Minister] dubbed it, by taking specific actions, trying to keep the focus on the situation in Ukraine, the counterparties have been trying to downplay the Russian proposals on security guarantees, turn them null and void and show that Russia's real policy is far from the things that they propose," the Belarusian minister of foreign affairs said.
"What is happening now around Ukraine is artificially and purposefully created by the forces that do not want Russia to play a decisive, important role in security in the region and in the world as a whole. This is the eternal dispute about who is stronger, who is right, who is the number one power," Vladimir Makei summed up.
