“During your first term, Minsk and Washington embarked on a path toward normalizing relations,” Lukashenko said in a letter sent on the occasion of US Independence Day and quoted by AFP.

“Unfortunately, at some point, Belarusian-American cooperation deviated from this positive line,” he said, assuring that “this situation does not correspond to the national interests of either our countries or our peoples.”

“It is time to change it,” stressed Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, adding that he hoped for “a restoration of positive dynamics in inter-state contacts and the implementation of mutually beneficial cooperation projects.”

Since returning to power in January, Donald Trump's administration has moved closer to Russia, Belarus's main ally, whose territory was used as a base for Russian troops to launch their offensive in Ukraine in February 2022 and which is subject to numerous Western sanctions.

The thaw in US-Russia relations has been particularly evident in recent months with the release or exchange of American citizens detained in Russia.

For its part, Belarus released opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky, husband of Belarusian opposition figure in exile Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, from prison at the end of June at the request of Donald Trump, according to Minsk.

The announcement of Tikhanovsky's release, who has been in prison since 2020, came a few hours after a meeting between Lukashenko and US envoy Keith Kellogg in Minsk, which, according to the official Belarusian agency Belta, was the highest-level visit by a US representative to the country in years. | BGNES