Envoy: West doing everything possible to avoid convergence of Russia and Belarus

The West is doing everything possible to avoid close integration of Russia and Belarus, trying to pull them away from each other, Russian Ambassador to Minsk Dmitry Mezentsev said on the Belarus-1 TV channel.

"The thing is that political integration and convergence between Belarus and Russia is a key factor that the West disagrees with, and [the West] needs to do everything to pull Belarus away from Russia. And unfortunately, there is a huge multitude of examples of that even before our eyes," the diplomat said.

Mezentsev stressed that seemingly, Western countries should encourage other states to converge, to move towards dialogue with the EU, to lower the level of tensions that "cannot correspond to the 21st century, the civilized century." However, threats and mutual claims move to the forefront, and a model is imposed that "a certain partner from post-Soviet states should agree with, and if they do not, threats and sanctions only rise."

According to the diplomat, this is "a dead end that won’t lead to anything, but makes all of us, both sides, poorer," TASS reported.