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Paviel Sieviaryniec: Lukashenka’s western initiatives is only for blackmailing Moscow

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The events in Ukraine should make Europeans pay attention to Belarus.

The opinion came from a co-chairman of the organizational committee for creation of the party Belarusian Christian Democracy Paviel Sieviaryniec.

In the course of the Eastern Partnership summit together with representatives of Belarusian opposition and civil society he met Lithuania’s president Dalia Grybauskaite, as well as the leaders of Ukrainian opposition Arseniy Yaceniuk and Vital Klichko, BelaPAN reminds.

The politician shared his impressions of the summit, the situation in Ukraine and perspectives of the resolution of Belarusian problems:

“First of all the summit was a great disappointment for the EU in terms of states, because the state authorities of most participant countries for the most part refused to integrate with Europe. The post-soviet club of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries silently let know in the end that they did not Europe at the moment. Russia paid their costs, whereas western values and standards were too much of a burden for them. That is why Europeans decided to switch their focus to the opposition and civil society in these countries, and put their efforts’ center of gravity on the soft power”.

The situation in Ukraine was the main topic, “the whirlpool, around which the Vilnius summit spun”, - Sieviaryniec says.

“Europeans gave Yanukovich a chance until the last moment to sign the Association Agreement, even if Yulia Timoshenko remained in jail, - he notes. – This did not take place, Europeans are angry. They are now formulating a new agenda in the relations with Ukraine and others, they speak in full voice of the Belarusization of Ukraine, that Yanukovich follows the steps of Lukashenka. Of course, all this puts a mark on the Europe-Belarus relations”.

Answering to the question how the political situation in Ukraine was different from the Belarusian, the BChD co-chairman emphasized: “Ukraine is no Belarus, let’s put it this way – Ukraine’s tactics of a pendulum swinging between East and West looks more even. In Belarus any western initiatives of Lukashenka is a blackmail targeted at Moscow. <. . . > It will be hard for Yanukovich to reach that level – the resistance of Ukrainian society is too high, the opposition is structured, there is more strength in the national sentiment of Ukrainians. At the same time the vector is clear – they simply beat the Ukrainian Maydan in the face. In 2004 they could not do that, now a sort of revanche is taking place, and, of course, it depends a lot on Ukrainians themselves, how strong will theresponse to Yanukovich be”.

Has not the Belarusian situation become overshadowed with the Ukrainian problems?

Paviel Sieviaryniec has a different opinion on that: “Had the summit ended with Ukraine’s triumph, Belarus would have gone to the sidelines. But now there are at least two factors that make Europeans take a closer look at Belarus. First is the Belarusization of Ukraine and other countries sliding down to the Belarusian path. In order to have a recipe developed for other countries, a way should be found to deal with Belarus.

Second – since there are loses at the Ukrainian, Armenian, Azerbaijani fronts, Europeans unwittingly pay attention to Belarus. The European message to Belarusians was quite clear – there is no good news in Belarus, everything has frozen, this is a dead-end. They expect good news from us – the opposition and civil society”.

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