Kyiv deprived Minsk of its sister city status

The Kiev City Council voted to deprive Minsk of the status of a sister city of Kyiv.

The deputies explained this decision by the fact that Russia is using Belarus as a springboard for an attack on the territory of Ukraine.

“After the de-occupation of the Kiev region, the whole world saw the tragic consequences of the stay of the “Russian world” - hundreds of killed, tortured, raped civilians,” the website of the City Council quotes deputy Grigory Malenko.

The deputy stressed that under the above conditions, any cooperation between the cities of Kyiv and Minsk is impossible, therefore, agreements in which such cooperation is recorded should not exist while an authoritarian regime operates in Belarus.

• Previously, Moscow was also a sister city of Kyiv. The Ukrainian side severed these relations in 2016 due to the war in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea to the Russian Federation.
• In 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, sister city relations with Russian cities were abandoned by a number of Ukrainian and European cities, including Kharkiv , Warsaw and Gdansk .