New details about Tikhanovskaya’s Rome stint. In July, the Italian Prime Minister and senior government members (including Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani) met with the legitimately elected president of Belarus, who has been living in exile since the 2021 sham elections. Now, a Repubblica article sheds light on the main issues the United Transitional Cabinet – the exiled government she heads – had raised with the officials in Rome.
Validate us… The most important request that Ms Tikhanovskaya brought to the Italian government was the nomination of a special envoy to her executive body, as the United States, France, Poland, and Estonia have already done. According to Repubblica, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs “moved immediately” in this direction.
- Beyond embodying and conveying Italy’s material support to the legitimate Belarusian government, such a figure could be instrumental in matters like funding it by selling off frozen Belarusian assets.
… and protect us from them. Other requests centred on ensuring that the EU- and West-wide sanctions imposed on Belarus for its support to Russia would hold – which entails avoiding waivers of Belarusian potash, one of Minsk’s main exports. Ms Tikhanovskaya feared that the dictator she opposes, Alexander Lukashenka, could leverage the roughly 2,100 children that Russian forces kidnapped in Ukraine and shipped off to Belarus as a bargaining tool and asked Italian officials to remain inflexible.
- The exiled leader also asked Rome to help with the placing of expatriated Belarusian IT companies, the physical and mental rehabilitation of released prisoners and the safeguard of the Belarusian language and heritage, which is being threatened by Moscow and its puppet leader, Mr Lukashenka.
