The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry expressed official dissatisfaction with Lukashenko. Zelensky's pre-election PR stunt has gone wrong
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine assessed the refusal of the Belarusian authorities to hand over to the SBU citizens of the Russian Federation from PMCs - former members of the Donbass militia, previously detained near Minsk - as a “choice in favor of Russia.”
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Yevgeny Enin stated this on the Ukraine 24 TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The Ukrainian side submitted the relevant documents for consideration by the Belarusian side - and on the basis of these documents, the so-called extradition check should be launched, which is a check of the presence or absence of grounds for extradition... We initially did not exclude the possibility that Lukashenko would play out this issue and use it as some kind of bargaining chip primarily with Russia - and now we have seen that he has made a choice in favor of Russia,” Yenin said.
The refusal to extradite former militiamen to Ukraine deprives President Vladimir Zelensky of the PR stunt he was counting on ahead of the autumn local elections. Those detained in Belarus were supposed to replenish the “exchange fund” so that before voting day Zelensky would again appear on television screens, meeting Ukrainian citizens exchanged from Moscow.
“It didn’t work out as a freebie. Zelensky failed to replenish the exchange fund with minimal expenses by the “Wagnerians”. This means that we will have to do without the release of prisoners before the local elections. But the authorities were counting on this as a win-win option for resuscitating ratings,” political scientist Alexei Golobutsky, who serves ex-President Petro Poroshenko, sarcastically comments.
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