On May 24, in Riga, where the flags of the countries participating in the World Ice Hockey Championship were displayed, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Latvia Edgars Rinkevics and the Mayor of Riga Martins Stakis replaced the state flag of Belarus on a white-red-white flag. The mayor of the Latvian capital noted that this gesture is an initiative of the Riga City Council, which was entrusted to it by the Belarusian opposition. This situation led to a diplomatic crisis and freeze relations between Latvia and Belarus.
“If in Riga someone, some kind of scoundrel, touched the Belarusian flag and began to tear it there, take it off, well, then the ambassador should go out and publicly with a threat, maybe for his own life to stuff that bastard in the face, in a man’s way And we have silence. And there is silence in the Foreign Ministry, so that you know (for journalists I say) until the president stamped his foot, “Lukashenko said.
He also criticized some other heads of the diplomatic missions of Belarus, who “let the situation in their collectives drift” and openly sided with the opponents of the current government.
“You are well aware of such examples. Former ambassadors to Argentina (Vladimir Astapenko), Spain (Pavel Pustovoy), Slovakia (Igor Leshchenya), Latvia (Vasily Markovich), former heads of foreign missions in Switzerland (Pavel Matsukevich), Dubai (Igor Bondarev). I’m not talking about [Павла] Latushko, who out of 21 years of his diplomatic experience spent 17 years abroad, “Lukashenko said.
All of them were previously dismissed and deprived of Lukashenka’s ambassadorial ranks.
He promised “not to stand on ceremony with traitors” and in the future to deprive the ranks of “everyone who did not justify the high rank of a diplomat.”
Lukashenka also ordered to reduce the number of embassies in EU countries. In his opinion, one ambassador with an assistant in a two-room apartment will be enough.
On August 9, 2020, presidential elections were held in Belarus, after which mass protests began, those who did not agree with the voting results. According to official figures, the victory in them was won by Lukashenka, who has been in power since 1994, for which 80.1% of voters voted. Oppositionist Svetlana Tikhanovskaya took second place with 10.1% of the vote. At the same time, alternative exit polls showed the opposite picture – a confident victory for Tikhanovskaya.
Belarusian security forces violently dispersed rallies using stun grenades, rubber bullets and water cannons… During the protests, hundreds of demonstrators were injured and injured. According to the human rights center “Viasna”, since August in the country detained more than 25 thousand people, in total they received 83 thousand days of arrest. The authorities announced four dead protesters, opposition – about eight.
On September 23, Lukashenko held a secret inauguration ceremony, for the first time in the history of Belarus. not announced and not televised… A number of states, including the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Denmark, Ukraine and Czech Republic, did not recognize Lukashenka’s inauguration.
In 2021, mass street protests in Belarus stopped.
Thereafter ES, USA, UK introduced several packages of sanctions against Lukashenka’s entourage, to sanctions Ukraine joined… European Union on the sanctions list included Lukashenka.
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