For the first time in 12 years: Belarus sends an ambassador to the United States

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko is sending an ambassador to the United States for the first time in 12 years - Oleg Kravchenko, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, has been appointed to head the diplomatic mission. In recent years, Oleg Kravchenko has visited Washington more than once on official visits and represented Belarus at various meetings and negotiations. Writes about this with the BBC.

Photo: Shutterstock

Until 2014, Kravchenko was the charge d'affaires of Belarus in the United States - since those very days in 2008, when there was a sharp rift in relations between the states.

How suddenly it got cold

Minsk recalled its ambassador from Washington “for consultations” and reduced the number of American embassy staff in March 2008 after the United States imposed sanctions on the state-owned Belneftekhim concern. Washington motivated the sanctions by human rights violations in Belarus.

These sanctions were not the first - at the beginning of October 2004, the United States imposed sanctions against Lukashenko and the country he leads for the suppression of democratic freedoms, adopting the “Act on Democracy in Belarus” with a long list of requirements for the current Belarusian president. One of the demands concerned the disappearances of Lukashenko’s political opponents, information about the fate of which has not yet been made public.

Belarusian Ambassador Mikhail Khvostov never returned to the United States in 2008, and US Ambassador Karen Stewart left Minsk at the insistence of the Belarusian side. Since then, the American mission in Minsk has been headed by chargé d'affaires.

The diplomatic staff of the US embassy in Minsk was reduced from 35 to five people; also reduced the list of consular services to citizens. Belarusian citizens were forced to apply for American visas at the consular offices of US embassies in Moscow, Warsaw, Kiev and Vilnius.

In 2014, the embassy resumed issuing visas to certain categories of citizens - for example, students, exchange program participants, people over 70 years of age and those who previously had a US visa.

How and why “warming” began

The leadership and official press of Belarus have criticized US policy for many years, but when receiving US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale in Minsk in September 2019, President Lukashenko said that Minsk was sending “not the only signal” about the need to normalize relations.

On the subject: Four and Lukashenko: candidates for presidency of Belarus who were allowed to run for election

David Hale told Lukashenko that Washington has made a decision to restore the diplomatic mission with Belarus at the level of ambassadors.

US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, during his visit to Minsk on February 1, 2020, said that the American ambassador would appear in Belarus in the near future.

Pompeo, the highest-ranking American official to visit Minsk in more than 15 years, also announced the United States’ readiness to provide the republic with “100 percent of the oil it needs at competitive prices,” a promise that could not have come at a better time for the Belarusian leadership during a protracted oil dispute with Belarus. Moscow.

The first tanker with American oil for Belarus arrived at the port of Lithuanian Klaipeda in early June; raw materials have already arrived at the Belarusian refinery in Novopolotsk. Belarus has purchased another 80 thousand tons of oil from the United States, the Belneftekhim concern reports, and the second tanker is due to arrive in August.

The head of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, Vladimir Makei, called these supplies “a factor in ensuring the sovereignty” of Belarus in the economic field.

Analysts in Minsk note that it is important for Lukashenko to restore economic and political ties with Washington against the backdrop of worsening relations with the Kremlin. The United States, according to experts, is strengthening its influence in Eastern Europe and is looking at whether it is possible to weaken the “allied” interdependence of Belarus and Russia, primarily in the field of military-technical cooperation.

The issue of attitude towards human rights in Belarus has not been removed from the agenda by Washington. On July 16, the US State Department expressed “deep concern” about the mass detentions of peaceful activists during the current presidential election campaign in Belarus.

Earlier, US Chargé d'Affaires in Belarus Jennifer Moore, together with European diplomats, called on official Minsk to take the necessary measures to “hold safe, peaceful, free and fair elections and ensure fundamental freedoms.”

Jennifer Moore completed her two-year mission in Minsk on July 18, before the arrival of the American ambassador, the diplomatic mission will be headed by a temporary attorney (now Jeff Jook).

In February, the American media named the possible head of the US Embassy in Belarus - Julie Fisher. Fisher serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Europe and the EU.

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