Belarus peacekeepers and USA as party to talks - FM about resolving conflict in Donbas
The sides should let ‘our peacekeepers’ enter Donbas and get the United States involved in the talks in order to deconflict the situation in eastern Ukraine, Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makey believes.
“We are going after some laurels. But this conflict is in our region, in our family – in the truest sense of the word. Therefore, the introduction of peacekeeping troops into Donbas, including Belarusian peacekeepers, might become an additional way to help the aggrieved parties”, he said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia.
The minister recalled that president Alyaksandr Lukashenka had come up with the idea of bringing peacekeepers as far back as 2014. According to Makey, the Belarusian leader also proposed to expand the format of the talks and get some other concerned states involved, including the USA.
He also cited Andrey Hramyka, a famous Soviet diplomat and native of Belarus:
“Ten years of negotiations is better than one day of a war.”
In the course of the recent EaP summit in Brussels, Makey also expressed readiness to send a Belarusian peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine ‘to deescalate the conflict in Donbas’.
