The difficult situation requires new responses from Belarusian diplomats to the aggressive policy of the West. The annual seminar of the heads of Belarusian diplomatic missions and consular offices has started in Minsk. Our diplomats gathered together from all corners of the planet to harmonize their positions and make future plans.
The focus was on import substitution in the context of countering Western sanctions! "This year Belarus plans to increase exports to Russia by a third," assured Ambassador of Belarus Vladimir Semashko. Our country will pay special attention to cooperation with Kaliningrad Region.
Vladimir Semashko, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Belarus to Russia:
We have always had very close relations with the Kaliningrad Region. It includes the supply of industrial products, agricultural products, foodstuffs. Our builders have worked there a lot. Because of certain actions that our neighbors have taken, so to speak, they have problems. To a large extent, the European Union understood that it made a wrong move and the restrictions, which were suddenly imposed in the middle of last month, were lifted.
Diplomats also raised the issue of the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War. A thematic exposition was opened at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is timed to the Year of Historical Memory. Among the exhibits are documents, exposing the crimes of Nazism, instruments of torture from Nazi prisons and materials collected by the General Prosecutor's Office. The ministry called the opening of the exhibition a kind of history lesson. The head of the Foreign Ministry emphasized that to please the political ambitions of some elites in theWest, there are a lot of fakes about the outcome of World War II. In addition to the replacement of concepts and falsification of history, there is a problem with freedom of expression and opinion in the West.
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry also paid attention to the scandal in Latvia after the interview of the Belarusian President to the young journalists from Riga.
Vladimir Makei, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus:
As it turned out, there is no freedom of speech in the West, in our neighboring countries. Moreover, this freedom of speech is being strangled in the in the harshest possible way: child journalists are not allowed to publish interviews, there is almost criminal prosecution. Latvian and Lithuanian citizens are not allowed into Belarus, because they have to say specific things about the situation in Belarus. Therefore, we must forget about the freedom of speech in the countries of our Western partners - it does not exist there.
The assessment of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry is unambiguous: "these are horrendous actions", summarized Vladimir Makei.












