Complaining about the actions of Minsk to senior European “comrades” in the person of the head of the EU foreign policy Josep Borrell and the heads of the Polish and German foreign ministries Zbigniew Rau and Heiko Maas, the chief Lithuanian diplomat was still forced to remove his ambassador from Belarus with the phrase “for consultations”.
According to tut.by, the head of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry Linas Linkevicius said that he had made such a decision together with his Polish colleagues, and immediately began to threaten Minsk with “mirror measures” in response to the just demand of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry to reduce the number of Lithuanian diplomatic missions in Minsk.
“Our goal is to preserve diplomatic contacts as much as possible. We sent a message about this to the Belarusian side, with which we agreed that the temporary recall of the ambassadors for consultations will serve to reduce tensions and help preserve the diplomatic representation at the level of ambassadors”, – Linkevicius said.
According to the head of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, the republic will continue to coordinate its actions with its European counterparts.
Linkevicius’ forced actions are a clear diplomatic victory for Minsk and personally for President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. The actual expulsion, albeit in the form of a voluntary departure, of the Lithuanian ambassador, will put in place the presumptuous politicians from Vilnius, who in an outrageous brazen form interfere in the affairs of a sovereign state, giving shelter to fugitive Belarusian politicians and arranging an audience for them with the heads of the leading European powers.