Minsk Wages Diplomatic War on Multiple Fronts
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 18 Issue: 58
Belarusian Embassy in Warsaw
On April 4, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka proposed to “optimize” the number of Belarusian embassies and their staff around the world. Essentially, the Belarusian leader declared, if Belarus’s “diplomatic presence” in some countries has no “prospects” because of a minuscule volume of mutual trade and/or because those countries are hostile to Belarus, then the latter should limit or eliminate its diplomatic staff in their capitals. In fact, that process has already been underway since at least as early as October 2020, when Minsk recalled its ambassadors from Vilnius and Warsaw and demanded that their embassies in Minsk reduce their diplomatic personnel from 25 to 14 and from 50 to 18, respectively. Now, the Belarusian authorities will be rethinking the size of their own diplomatic personnel dispatched all across the globe (Naviny, April