Russia and Belarus have announced that they are stepping up their cooperation against “US and Western aggression”.
This is a new sign of rapprochement between the two countries after Alexander Lukashenko's meeting with Vladimir Putin, at the same time as the repression of the opposition in Belarus is intensifying.
Russia's foreign intelligence service has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating “Similar, baseless allegations concerning Russia's foreign intelligence service have been made more than once.
According to the two intelligence chiefs, Western countries are “trying to destabilize the political and socio-economic situation” of their two countries, according to a statement issued by the SVR following its meeting in Vitebsk, Belarus.
Following a wave of mass anti-election protests in Belarus last year, President Alexander Lukashenko has launched a crackdown on opposition groups, accusing the West of orchestrating a protest against him.
The European Union and the United States have imposed sanctions on the Lukashenko regime, and the Belarusian president is seeking a rapprochement with Moscow, which he has accused of seeking to turn his country into a vassal.
The two countries have been linked since 1999 as part of the Russia-Belarus Union, a political-economic alliance without specific terms of operation, which has stalled despite Moscow's ongoing efforts to deepen the two countries' economic, political and military integration.
Last week, Alexander Lukashenko met in the Black Sea region of Sochi with Vladimir Putin to discuss the chapter on economic integration, according to the Kremlin.
Belarus is highly dependent on Russia, which is expected to increase if the European Union imposes new sanctions on two sectors of the Belarusian economy: gas transit and potash exports.
