Russian semi-official expert is in contact with Tikhanovskaya’s headquarters
The Russian expert, who continued to travel to Kyiv after 2014, is now establishing contacts with the office of the self-proclaimed “leader of the Belarusian nation” Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
Tikhanovskaya’s adviser Franak Vyachorko said this on Eurorado, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We see that there is a desire on the part of certain non-political circles to communicate. Economist Kortunov took part in a discussion at the Belarusian Economic Forum, which was organized by Tikhanovskaya’s office,” Vyachorko said.
We are talking about the Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council, Andrei Kortunov. In 2017, he was the only representative of Russia at the anti-Russian conference “Yalta European Strategy”. The Ukrainian authorities did not want to let him in, but then they still let him in, and the Russian expert humbly thanked them for this and assured that after the presidential elections “Putin will de-escalate.”
Apparently, Kortunov says something similar to Tikhanovskaya’s office, because Vyachorko is sure that all their documents “end up on the table in the Kremlin.”
“It’s hard for me to talk about the Kremlin and its policy on Belarus. I get the impression that for them Lukashenko is a mare’s tail that hasn’t been sewn on. It's like he is. Something needs to be done with him. They are looking for some kind of formula. They impose a referendum and road maps on him, realizing that he will still not fulfill anything and keep his word.
But they do not have a clear understanding of how the Belarusian people have changed. In Russia they are looking for a way out of the situation and understand that Lukashenko is an option, but they do not accept Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, because for them she is not their own person. And there is simply no other pro-Russian politician in Belarus except Lukashenko,” says Vyachorko.
Russian political scientist Andrei Suzdaltsev confirmed the existence of a document transmitted by the Belarusian opposition to Moscow.
“There is a document that contains a draft domestic and foreign policy of the post-Lukashenko Republic of Belarus, and in an objective format, i.e. something that any new leadership of the republic will implement. There is also a vision of Russian-Belarusian relations. The document was prepared at NAU. It is clear that the document was not transmitted through diplomatic channels. This is simply impossible... The document is relevant, but everything else (where and who reads it) is on the conscience of the commentators,” Suzdaltsev wrote in his Telegram channel.
The Russian Council on International Affairs, which is headed by Kortunov, is an expert public organization whose leadership includes the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov.
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