MOSCOW, 9 October (BelTA) - Responsible and serious members of the European Union do not want “to burn bridges” with Belarus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the media, BelTA has learned.
According to the Russian foreign minister, two trends on how to proceed with Belarus coexist in the European Union. “The first trend is strongly fueled by the countries that are the immediate neighbors of Belarus, especially Lithuania and Poland that take an aggressive stance recalling the shared history in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. These countries are clearly tempted, quite strongly, to gain some additional geopolitical space, so to speak. They are doing it under an undisguised slogan: to disrupt Belarus' ties with Russia, to take it away from Russia. The countries with such a position are a minority in the EU, as far as I understand,” Sergey Lavrov noted.
“Another trend promoted by responsible, serious states is that the EU should not repeat the mistakes made in respect of Ukraine. These two trends collide, they can hardly be compatible,” he continued. “This is why the EU makes vague statements. You get the feel that between these two trends there is such a silent majority that really does not want to burn bridges and make some statements that will be impossible to realize,” he said.
The Russian foreign minister recalled that Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko had put forward an initiative to carry out a constitutional reform in the country. “This is a good opportunity to launch a national dialogue, during which all sectors of the Belarusian society can agree on how they want to further develop their state and their nation” the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
