Washington not seeking to limit interaction between Minsk and Moscow, Belarus Foreign Ministry claims

The U.S. will not try to get Belarus to limit its cooperation with Russia, Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus Oleg Kravchenko told TASS on Thursday. He is currently on a visit to Washington.

He replied negatively to the question whether Washington is making any attempts to condition the normalization of the Belarusian-American relations by limiting Minsk’s interaction with Moscow.

“Absolutely not. It has never been put like this either before or now. Indeed, this is absolutely not the case. I’ve simply never encountered it,” said Kravchenko.

He recalled that relatively recently the topic of interaction between Belarus and Russia in the context of relations between Minsk and Washington was touched upon by former U.S. President’s National Security Advisor John Bolton when he visited Minsk. Later, this topic was raised by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia George Kent.

“The relations between Belarus and Russia are Belarus’ business,” said Deputy Foreign Minister. “And judging by what I see in our discussions with the Americans, I can really confirm that there are no calls or expectations on the part of the U.S. with regard to our cooperation with Russia”.

As for the cooperation between Belarus and the U.S. in the military sphere, Kravchenko specified that it’s small in scale. “This cooperation includes several points with the main ones being the learning of English by Belarusian military in the relevant educational institutions in Europe, as well as cooperation in the preparation of our peacekeeping company. That is, I would not call this cooperation any particularly developed or large-scale,” said the Deputy Minister.

He also added that the law enforcement agencies of the two countries are engaged in and intend to expand cooperation in the areas of combating terrorism, organized crime and cybercrime.

belsat.eu