Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, being at a press conference in Minsk, neither confirmed, nor denied the information, appeared in the media, not to meet with the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko under the Kremlin order. According to the minister, the Russian delegation arrived in Belarus solely to take part in the board meeting of the two Foreign Ministries.
«We arrived in Minsk with a specific task — to hold a joint meeting of the Foreign Ministries of both countries. We held it and made a decision of an important practical solution for the coordination of action in foreign policy. The other events, when negotiated on a trip, hadn’t been mentioned,» Sergey Lavrov said, Itar-Tass.
According to Telegraf, Russian media reported on Tuesday, November 23 that President Alexander Lukashenko had allegedly refused to meet with Russian Foreign Minister on the background of recent deteriorating of relations between Moscow and Minsk.
Later, the media reported that the Russian leadership and, in particular, President Dmitry Medvedev, had banned a number of the key ministries’ heads to meet with the Belarusian leader.