Kazakhstan summoned Paval Utsyupin, Belarus’s ambassador in Astana, to “objectively assess” the Central Asian nation’s stance on key international issues in an unbiased manner amid rising tensions between the two countries, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reported.
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry did not say specifically why it summoned Utsyupin, but it comes after Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko made several controversial statements in an interview with Russian state television.
Kazakh Foreign Minister Murat Nurtleu said at the August 21 meeting with Utsyupin that Astana is “confident that all differences between any nations must be solved solely via political and diplomatic means.”
In the televised interview on August 20, Lukashenko accused some post-Soviet states of what he called “unfair relations with Russia,” specifically mentioning antigovernment protests in Kazakhstan in January 2022 that turned deadly after Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev invited troops of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to help him restore order.
“We have to be together. The time will come soon to ask Russia for help. Nobody else is there to ask for help…. When the situation occurred in Kazakhstan, whom did it refer to for help? China, India, Pakistan? No. It turned to Putin for help. And we sent [CSTO] troops there. In just half of one day our planes landed there, and order was restored,” Lukashenko said in the interview.
The interview caused a sharp reaction in Kazakhstan and other countries such as Armenia, where protesters pelted the Belarusian Embassy in Yerevan with eggs and other produce and demanded diplomatic ties with Minsk be cut over Lukashenko’s interview, in which he also criticized Armenia’s shift westward.
“Who needs Armenians? Nobody. Let them develop their economy and rely on their own resources. What is France? Who is [French President Emmanuel] Macron? Tomorrow, when Macron is gone, everybody will forget about the Armenians,” Lukashenko said in the interview.
