WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th July, 2021) Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said her country has to have a normal relationship with Russia, but Moscow should refrain from interfering in Minsk's internal issues.
"We want to continue trade profitable for both countries, we will always be neighbors, and we have to create normal relationship," Tikhanovskaya said at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York on Monday.
The best policy to play a positive role in Belarus for the Kremlin is not to interfere in internal policy, she added.
Tikhanovskaya suggested that the Kremlin may want to stop supporting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, but it does not know how to do that in current circumstances.
Asked to draw parallel between her country and Ukraine at the time of Euro-Maidan in 2014, Tikhanovskaya mentioned a different context of the two situation.
"We can see a lot of parallels, but also we can see a lot of differences. In Belarus, we do not have this anti-Russian or pro-European course. Everything we want is to give people a right to choose whom they want [to be]," she said.
Tikhanovskaya started her visit to the US on July 18. She has already met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Under Secretary Victoria Nuland, State Department Counselor Derek Chollet, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
This week, Tikhanovskaya is expected to meet with UN Security Council representatives. She told her supporters in New York that she wanted to ask them to "have Belarus on the agenda." After her stay in New York, Tikhanovskaya is expected to have meeting in San Francisco from July 28-29, and in Los Angeles from July 30-31.
