JRL NEWSWATCH: “Lukashenko rhetoric shows fallout between Minsk and Moscow”- Financial Times/ Max Seddon, James Shotter
“Arrest of 33 Russians comes as Belarusian president’s strategy of playing Russia and the west off each other founders.”
“… Belarus authorities arrested the [Russian] men [checking into a sanatorium outside Minsk as would-be tourists] and another Russian, claiming they were mercenaries plotting to ‘destabilise the situation’ ahead of Sunday’s [historically contentious] elections [in Belarus] …. [The arrests and surrounding circumstances are] a bellwether for Belarus’s deteriorating relationship with Russia, its longtime patron. … Lukashenko’s allegations come as the opposition enjoys a surge of support due to [his] cavalier response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he dismissed as a ‘psychosis’ despite recently contracting the disease himself. … [Meanwhile,] Ukraine has requested the extradition of 28 of the men on charges of fighting for Kremlin-controlled separatists in [Ukraine’s] east. …”
Click here for: Lukashenko rhetoric shows fallout between Minsk and Moscow; Arrest of 33 Russians comes as Belarusian president’s strategy of playing Russia and the west off each other founders”- Financial Times/ Max Seddon, James Shotter