Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s opening remarks at a meeting with President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, Minsk, January 19, 2023

Mr Lukashenko,

Thank you for this meeting. I am delighted to pass on the greetings from President Vladimir Putin.

In 2022, you met with him personally ten times, in addition to telephone conversations. We cannot compete with you at the level of the foreign ministers, but it should be this way.

The meeting of the two boards is as timely as never. The agenda will focus on the situation that developed as a result of the course for total domination, which is pursued by our Western colleagues led by the Americans who got everyone to follow their orders. We can see it in NATO’s and the EU’s stances. The Council of Europe is already following this road. Many problems have accumulated in the OSCE. These are the main issues on our agenda together with cooperation with international organisations, where it is important to prevent the “privatisation” of secretariats. The West is intent on doing this as well.

It is especially important to coordinate our actions related to human rights protection in the Human Rights Council and other mechanisms where the Westerners are trying to politicise discussions that must be held on the basis of the existing international humanitarian law.

As for the special military operation, together with our Belarusian allies and friends, we are taking all the necessary measures to protect ourselves from potential encroachment, as you said, by your Western neighbours.

We see how NATO is making itself comfortable in Northern Europe (Finland and Sweden), which used to be a neutral territory to a large extent. All this is happening close to our borders.

I absolutely agree with you that the agreements reached by the two presidents in our miliary-technical, military and defence cooperation are well-timed in terms of raising our preparedness for any developments.