Washington will send Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Bigan to Russia and Lithuania for talks on the Belarusian coup d’etat.
It is reported by the agency “Reuters”, citing its own sources.
According to media reports, the American official will leave for a visit to Moscow in the coming days. From there he will go straight to Vilnius, where the fugitive leader of the Belarusian pro-Western opposition Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is hiding.
The State Department declined to comment on the information.
Attempted coup in Belarus
On August 9, presidential elections were held in Belarus, following which Alexander Lukashenko won. Western countries, for which the Belarusian leader had been a hindrance for a long time, did not put up with the voting results. As a result, pre-planned riots broke out in Belarus.
Attempts by law enforcement officers to keep the situation under control turned into clashes with radicals. At the same time, the Western media, actively covering the protests, focus specifically on the actions of the security forces against the “peaceful” protesters, as was the case during the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014.
The headquarters of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the leader of the pro-Western opposition, is preparing for lengthy protests aimed at overthrowing the government. A committee for the “transit of power” has already been formed there. Tihanovskaya herself is hiding in Lithuania. Lukashenko, in turn, does not rule out that he will resign, but only after a referendum on amendments to the constitution.
The position of the European Union regarding what is happening is ambiguous. Poland and Lithuania are actively working on the revolutionary scenario. They are also promoting more radical measures of pressure on official Minsk in the EU. Western European countries are taking a more cautious approach. They are afraid to provoke a new round of confrontation with Russia. The expert community believes that this is a deliberately losing option for the EU.
Despite internal disagreements, the European Union still refused to recognize Lukashenko as president, threatens with sanctions and intends to allocate 53 million euros, allegedly to support the “Belarusian people”. Part of this money will be received by the extremists who participated in the riots. In addition, the EU will finance the media that promote the anti-government agenda in the republic.