Belarus liquidates Swedish Embassy and calls back all diplomats

The Belarusian MFA has stated on Wednesday that it withdraws the Belarusian Embassy in Sweden. The MFA claims that Minsk hoped to "switch bilateral relations onto a normal track", but the Swedish MFA "decided to sharpen the relations and took an additional decision to expel two senior diplomats of the Belarusian Embassy from the country, including the Charge D'Affaires". They also banned the new Belarusian Ambassador from entering Sweden, informs BELTA.

The Swedes have been suggested to withdraw their Embassy in Minsk by August 30.

However, the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has underlined that this doesn't mean breaking the diplomatic relations.

Let us remind you, it became known last week that the Belarusian authorities had not renewed the accreditation of Swedish Ambassador to our country Stefan Eriksson. A real diplomatic war started between Minsk and Stockholm.

The Swedish MFA reacted t this with a special statement. Sweden's Minister for Foreign affairs Carl Bildt stated that expel of the Swedish Ambassador from Belarus was a "severe violation of norms for the interstate relations". Bildt called the accusations set against the Ambassador by the Belarusian authorities ungrounded.

At that moment, Euroradio was informed in the Belarusian MFA that they had not expelled the Ambassador but had taken the decision not to renew his accreditation. They also underlined that this was not connected with the "teddy bears case".

Andrei Savinykh: "Mr. Stefan Eriksson has worked in Minsk for 7 years. This is a long term. During all this time, his activity was aimed not at strengthening of the Belarusian-Swedish relations, but at demolishing thereof".

Let us note that Alyaksandr Lukashenka promised recently that there would be an "adequate response" to the illegal flight of the Swedish plane over Belarus.

Photo — belarus.by