Minsk will be “first in line” to peace talks on Ukraine – senior diplomat

July 3, BPN. A senior Belarusian diplomat has said Minsk will be “first in line” to peace talks on Ukraine because it wants to get security guarantees.

“Our top priority is that our sky, although it is gray today, remains peaceful,” Deputy Foreign Minister Juryj Ambrazievič said yesterday on the STV channel.

“The president has repeatedly stressed that we never ask to be mediators,” he added. “But I am convinced that we are ready to provide everything that we have, to share what we have with the relevant parties, and to deliver results.”

Alaksandr Łukašenka can join a group of Russian elites who are ready for negotiations but stay in the shadows, Ukraine’s top security official, Oleksiy Danilov, said last month amid Wagner Group’s short-lived mutiny.

Wagner Group is led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, formerly a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin called for an armed rebellion to oust the Russian defense minister, but later backed down after reaching agreements with Łukašenka.

Russian and Ukrainian delegations had met in Belarus for talks at the outset of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but the process stalled for various reasons, such as, according to analysts, Moscow’s war crimes and NATO’s arms supplies to Kyiv.