Foreign Minister dismisses Lukashenko’s accusations to Lithuania as fiction

“I would like to hear well-grounded statements from a head-of-state. In this case, this is fiction out of the blue,” the minister told BNS on Tuesday.

Linkevičius urged the Belarusian administration to stop looking for enemies in foreign countries and within the state who could be blamed for the tense situation in Belarus.

In his words, Lithuania is closely watching the detentions in Belarus, calling upon the country to stick to its international commitments, respect human rights and follow principles of the rule of law, as these efforts will determine the Minsk relations with the European Union (EU).

“In recent past, we saw positive signs, we would not want the situation to change for the worse. Let’s hope we are not thrown back to the times of political prisoners in Belarus,” said Linkevicius.

The Belarusian hard-line president stated earlier on Tuesday that Lithuania and Poland could have been training fighters who were behind provocations in his country.

In Lukashenko’s words, a few dozen persons have been detained over the armed provocations.

“The other camps were located in Ukraine (and), it seems to me, in Lithuania or Poland – I won’t insist on this, but somewhere there. The money was coming here via Poland and Lithuania,” Belarus’ state-run news agency Belta cited Lukashenko as saying in Mogilev.

Last week, Belarus started hearing a case of 50 individuals detained during protests against Lukashenko.

The unusually large protest actions in the country’s biggest cities were triggered by the controversial tax the president introduced upon persons without permanent employment.