Aleksandr Surikov: Belarus’ authorities have discredited themselves

Russia’s ambassador to Belarus has never spoken so bluntly.

Aleksandr Surikov stated that the arrest of the head of the supervisory board of the Belarusian Potassium Company, Uralkali’s director general Vladislav Baumgartner should be considered a case that has discredited the Belarusian authorities, Interfax reports.

“There is some unclear discretization of the authorities”, - Surikov claimed on Tuesday in an interview to the reporters of Russian TV channels, accredited in Minsk.

He reminded that Baumgartner had arrived to Minsk by the invitation of the Prime Minister, a meeting with him took place, after which the head of Uralkali was going to leave for Moscow, but was detained at the airport.

According to Surikov, Vladislav Baumgartner is currently detained at KGB jail.

“I am not familiar with such an international practice when the authorities invite someone, and then law enforcement bodies detain them. An invitation should, probably, be a sort of a guarantee of security, and the subsequent actions of law enforcers in this situation are not completely correct in regards to their own authorities”, - the diplomat said.

He added that “such incidents, probably, happen in international practice, but they are exceptionally rare”.

It was Belarus’ Investigatory Committee that reported of Vladislav Baumgartner’s detention on 26 August. A criminal case for violating the part 3 of the article 424 of Belarus’ Criminal Code (power abuse) has been started against Uralkali’s director general, who is the chairman of the supervisory board of the closed corporation Belarusian Potassium Company.

Baumgartner visited Belarus by the invitation of the head of Belarusian government. Uralkali’s head of the public relations department Aleksandr Babinskiy reported that apart from Vladislav Baumgartner Uralkali’s chairman of the board Aleksandr Voloshin and the company’s shareholder Suleiman Kerimov were invited to Minsk. Baumgartner’s detention, which took place after negotiations, is considered “a gross provocation” at Uralkali, Babinskiy claimed.