The presidents of Russia and Belarus Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko resumed talks for a second day in the Black Sea city of Sochi amid a scandal sparked by the Belarusian authorities’ diversion of the RyanAir flight from Athens to Vilnius to Minsk to apprehend a Belarusian opposition civilian.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov, yesterday was the day of formal talks and today was the day of informal talks, which the two took advantage of “to take a boat ride”.
According to the Kremlin spokesman, Putin and Lukashenko discussed issues of “economic cooperation” and “dealing with the pandemic”, as well as the incident with the RyanAir aircraft.
“Lukashenko gave his counterpart detailed information about what happened on the RyanAir plane,” Peshkov said, adding that “Moscow is not indifferent to the fate of the Russian Sofia Sapega, the journalist’s friend Roman Protasevich, who was arrested.” with him.
The Kremlin insisted that Lukashenko “did not make any requests for additional financial assistance” to Russia, Belarus’s main creditor, measures imposed by the European Union.
The Kremlin spokesman reiterated that Moscow wanted an “in-depth investigation” into the circumstances of the incident and accused the West of “drawing hasty conclusions”.
A coalition of 27 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and several European countries, issued a statement today calling for the release of Roman Protasevic, calling the incident “shocking and unprecedented”, which is a “frontal attack on press freedom”.
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