Oh, where are you, brother?

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that the Union State of Belarus and Russia is “an unfinished project,” Kommersant writes on July 24. He noted that in relations with Russia, “controversial issues, behind which consistency and systematicity can be traced, are becoming increasingly acute,” and this causes his country not only concern, but even “pain and disappointment.”

Lukashenko is upset that Russia is destroying “the established unified security system from Brest to Vladivostok in all its dimensions” and destroying “the deep and interconnected space of engineering and technological cooperation.” Talking with the heads of foreign Belarusian diplomatic missions, the president was much more willing to talk about prospects in relations with the United States and the European Union, as well as with Ukraine, which for Belarus “in the current economic realities” is “the most important access to the southern seas, a transit route for domestic goods, a possible in the future, an additional route for delivering energy resources to Belarus.”

A powerful addition to these words was the appeal of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to citizens of the country to take into account the laws of Georgia when visiting Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Thus, Belarus not only once again demonstrated that it is not ready to recognize the independence of the republics dear to the Russian heart, but also generally respects the territorial integrity of Georgia. Kommersant quotes an employee of the Russian presidential administration, Dmitry Medvedev, as saying that “the time and place chosen for such statements suggest that the leadership of Belarus is deliberately complicating the bilateral dialogue.” At the same time, the newspaper’s interlocutor predicted that Belarus would have problems with money.