Officials Of Russian Federal Service For Veterinary And Phytosanitary Surveillance Fear Visiting Belarus In February

The Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance has cancelled the visit of its specialists due to the possible “provocations” from the side of the Belarusian authorities.

Spokesperson for the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Julia Melano has informed that the directive board of the institution decided to postpone the visit of the service’s specialists to Belarus, scheduled on February, RIA Novosti reports.

“The Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance made a decision to postpone the visit, previously scheduled on February, because many employees appear concerned about the possible provocations from the Belarusian side,” — she has said.

Melano has noted that the new terms of the visit will be set after the “stabilization of the situation” and that the parties were to discuss the increase of supplies of the vegetational products from Belarus to Russia, during the above-mentioned visit.

It has also been informed that the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance will control the Belarusian products from the checkpoint at the Russian border to the place of realization.

We remind, on February 3 the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance restricted the beef supplies from Minsk region to Russia.

On that very day, during the meeting with the journalists and the expert community Lukashenka demanded to initiate a criminal case against the head of the service Sergey Dankvert.

Head of the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Sergey Dankvert responded to that with a suggestion Lukashenka should put the Belarusian enterprises in order first. He also confessed that he had perceived such statements of the Belarusian president as “not exactly correct means of putting pressure on the service in general.” He also insisted that Russia didn’t politicize the issue of cooperation with Belarus regarding the supplies of the agricultural products. On February 7, the Interior Ministry of Belarus announced conducting a series of pre-investigative checks on the actions containing the features of discredit of the business reputation of the Belarusian enterprises.