MINSK, 26 September (BelTA) - Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei put the blame for the bloodshed in Ukraine on the collective West as he addressed the 77th session of the UN General Assembly in New York on 24 September, BelTA learned.
The head of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs compared the situation after the ‘victory' of the West in the Cold War with the Versailles treat following the First World War when the winning side decided to trample the opponent.
He noted that the Cold War ended not even with an official treaty but with some kind of "gentleman's agreements" and declarations. “As the subsequent events revealed, the so-called ‘winning' side did not respect them. In fact, the arrangements stood as nothing more than a ‘Versailles 2.0'” the minister said.
According to him, the West showed itself selfish by offering the post-Soviet states the one and only path, that is of its satellites. In an effort to embed this status the West chose to expand one of its key Cold War-era institutions – the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. NATO's eastward expansion occurred despite the arrangements achieved with the West, including by the Soviet leaders. Furthermore, the West overlooked the legitimate security interests of both Russia and Belarus. With its drive to enlarge NATO, the West has essentially trampled upon the indivisibility of security, the vital principle, which states that one party must not seek to achieve its own security at the expense of other parties.
NATO's involvement in the illegal wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria, in addition to the Alliance's attempts to encroach on some historical Eastern Slavic and adjacent lands predetermined for the Versailles 2.0. the fate of the first Versailles.
“Therefore, it is the collective West that should fully bear the responsibility for the ongoing bloodshed in Ukraine. It was exactly the West that made this conflict inevitable – not only through its decision to expand NATO, but also by its refusal to consider the proposals that came from its opponents. After all, such proposals did come,” Vladimir Makei said.
