Lapshin extradition ‘Lukashenko’s provocation against Russia’ – analyst

The Belarusian authorities’ decision to extradite Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan was a hint of provocation by President Alexander Lukashenko against Russia, according to Victor Konaplev, a Russian political commentator.

“Lukashenko, who looks for every possible occasion to do harm to Russia, has found a failure like [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev, who is practically unable to invent a good way to take revenge upon Russia over [Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov’s statement saying that Nagorno-Karabakh should not be on Azerbaijan’s domestic policy agenda. So they together [Aliyev and Lukashenko] came up with a small illicit trick as this,” he told Tert.am, commenting on the scandal surrounding the Russian-Azerbaijani blogger.

Describing the criminal case against Lapshin as a “mosquito’s bite” for Russia, Konaplyov said he expects the country’s government “to draw relevant conclusions after all this” to react correspondingly

“Travelling to Minsk isn’t now certainly safe for a person who has ever visited Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh]. We know many people did that in the past, and their number is expected to increase. What happened was a kind of free advertisement for Artsakh,” the analyst said.

In his words, Lukashenko’s policy is a clear sign that his country is not going to be of any help to Armenia in the current tensions with Azerbaijan.

“Aliyev has found a good ally in the person of the Belarusian president to block the activities of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). So I will not be surprised to hear of another incident on the Line of Contact between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan in the near future. The CSTO will not offer any assistance to Armenia unless, of course, Russia demonstrates its principled stance underlying the Armenian-Russian strategic alliance,” Konaplyov added.