| Canada refused to refuel the Belarusian Prime Minister The visit of the newly appointed Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky to Cuba was marred by an unpleasant incident. Ottawa denied the government plane a technical landing. “We are not ready to facilitate the entry of high-ranking representatives of the Belarusian regime into Canada,” Matthew Mayer, a spokesman for the Canadian Embassy in Russia and Belarus, said in an interview with Interfax. According to him, “the Canadian government allowed the Belarusian plane to fly in its airspace, but did not allow it to land on Canadian territory.”
During the flight of the Belarusian government delegation to Cuba, two technical stops were planned - in Iceland and Canada. According to unofficial data, Iceland agreed to refuel the plane on the condition that the head of the ideological department of the presidential administration, Oleg Proleskovsky, and the head of Belteleradiocompany, Alexander Zimovsky, who are subject to EU visa restrictions, will not leave the plane. In the end, permission was received to refuel in the United States, and only on the condition that the blacklisted officials would remain in Minsk.
As you know, on April 10, the EU introduced visa restrictions on 31 Belarusian government officials as a sign of disagreement with the results of the presidential elections held in Belarus on March 19, in which Alexander Lukashenko received 83% of the votes. Canada has also made harsh statements against Belarus more than once. Ottawa's position is related to the detention of Canadian journalist Frederic Lavoie during protests in Minsk, who was sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest. Anna NAUMOVA, Olga TOMASHEVSKAYA, Minsk |
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