Ukraine and Belarus’ Official Contacts to Be Paused

Relations between Ukraine and Belarus remain actual, but contacts between Ukrainian and Belarusian officials have been kept on hold. Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba stated this in his interview for Radio “Svoboda.”

“To be as precise as possible, and in this particular case I would like to narrow the space for interpretation, I say that the contacts between the official representatives of Ukraine and Belarus got kept on hold. The relationship is maintained, both diplomatic relations and relations in a broader sense between our people,'”the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry head said.

According to him, Ukraine wants to calmly wait for the political crisis settlement in the neighbouring country, and only then will decide how to build relations with Belarus.

“We have decided to put on hold the contacts, meetings between ministries, departments, many of which were traditional ones, regular and invisible. Some of them do not even get into the news, because these are routine affairs of the two neighbouring states. We have paused all this now,” the minister said.

To recap, Kuleba recently stated that relations with Belarus would not be the same as before. The reason for this is not only the mass and systemic human rights violations in Belarus but also the decision to blame Ukraine for everything connected with “the Wagnerians.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine declared at the end of August that the state would not sever diplomatic relations with Belarus, but  will “pause” official and diplomatic contacts until the situation in Belarus is resolved.

Bohdan Marusyak