MOSCOW, 22 July (BelTA) – Self-exiled Belarusian opposition is doing everything to destabilize the situation in Belarus, including the economic situation. They are not independent politicians. They act on the orders of foreign curators, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova told a briefing for the press in Moscow on 22 July, BelTA has learned.
“Belarusian emigres do not offer a constructive, unifying agenda to overcome the crisis in the country. Moreover, they ignore the steps taken by Minsk, for example, on the constitutional reform, which is extremely important for the state. On the contrary, we see that they are doing everything possible to destabilize the situation in the country and damage its economy. It will just suffice to mention the statements and calls on the Western community to impose new sanctions against Belarus and the Belarusian economy, citizens of the country. Does this consolidate society? Is it beneficial to Belarus as a state? Is this in the national interests?” Maria Zakharova asked.
“We believe that those calling for tougher sanctions against their own country and their own people are unlikely to have a political future," the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “We believe and proceed from the fact that only Belarusian citizens and their legal representatives, rather than self-appointed leaders of democratic forces (as they call themselves and as their Western curators call them) have the right to decide on the future of their country."
“It is obvious that those supposedly independent political figures of Belarus that are currently exiled are controlled by the forces that have nothing to do with Belarus at all,” Maria Zakharova pointed out. “These forces control everything: their living, work, financing, protection, political activities. This is not about independent political figures that represent one or another part (the majority or the minority) of the Belarusian nation, but about foreign forces that recruited some Belarusian citizens who could help them promote their own agenda,” she added.
Moscow has no desire to facilitate the legitimization of the fugitive Belarusian opposition leaders, Maria Zakharova noted. “Belarus' domestic processes are Belarus' own business. This is all there is to say,” she stressed.
