Lithuania Will Support Belarusian Students, Business and Civil Society

Belarus will remain a priority in the new Lithuanian government.

The candidate for the post of the Prime Minister of Lithuania from the Homeland Union - Lithuanian Christian Democrats (HULCD) party, MP Ingrida Šimonytė, if appointed, intends to continue the government's policy of supporting the Belarusian opposition, business, and civil society.

The politician told about her plans to the news portal Delfi.

When asked whether the government under her leadership would establish and maintain an official dialogue with the team of ex-presidential candidate Sviatlana Tiskhanouskaya and the Coordination Council for resolving the political crisis in the country, created on her initiative, Šimonytė replied that Lithuania "has had good and close relations with representatives of the Belarusian opposition."

"There are many of our friends there, with whom our politicians have been friends for 20, 30, and more years, since the times of Sąjūdis and the end of the 80s of the last century," she said.

"Before the elections, we had fears about how Lukashenka would behave; we had our finger on the pulse so that later we could somehow speak out in terms of international reaction," Šimonytė said. - What happened after the election was even worse than we anticipated. But the public reaction was also much stronger than we, as optimists, had thought. It was impossible not to react to what happened in Belarus."

"We turned to the current government with proposals for supporting the media, civil society, students who simply come running here from Belarus, businesses that may want to move here. I think that, in a natural way, the government will comply with what is proposed to the current government; this is very important for us," the politician emphasized.