Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei has died at the age of 64, the national Belta news agency reported on Saturday (November 26th).
“
Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei passed away suddenly
,” Belta reported.
He had held his position since 2012. The reasons for the death are still unknown.
He had attended a conference of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) - a military alliance of several post-Soviet states - in Yerevan earlier this week and was due to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Monday (28 November).
An attempt to improve Belarusian-Western relations
Before the presidential election and the massive anti-government protests that took place in Belarus in 2020, Vladimir Makei had been one of the initiators of efforts to improve Belarus' relations with the West and had been critical of Russia.
However, he abruptly changed his position after the protests began, saying they were inspired by agents of the West.
Read alsoUkraine: how Russia could deploy a nuclear arsenal in Belarus
On Twitter, the director of the Franco-Russian Observatory in Moscow Arnaud Dubien recalls that "
the Kremlin saw in him an opponent of the [Belarusian] alignment with Moscow
".
"
We are shocked by the information about the death of the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus Vladimir Makei
", for his part, posted the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova on her Telegram channel. .
"
The official condolences will be published shortly
."
