Belarus reiterates call to send peacekeepers to Donbass

Belarus supports the idea of deploying peacekeepers in Donbass and having the United States involved into the negotiations, Minister for Foreign Affairs Uladzimir Makei said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestiya. He stressed the importance of the Minsk negotiation process for stopping the war and bloodshed in eastern Ukraine. However, additional steps are required at the moment.

“We are not trying to reap laurels,” Makei said. “But there is an ongoing conflict in our region, in our family. We need additional measures and bringing peacekeepers, including the ones from Belarus, could help.”

Alyaksandr Lukashenka first suggested this back in 2014, Makei reminded. The Belarus president also proposed to expand the format of the negations to include all stakeholders, including the United States. Makei recalled the words pronounced by Belarus-born famous Soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko: “Ten years of negotiations is better than a single day of war.”