Hungary's Foreign Minister visits Minsk again to "maintain communication channels"

Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, arrived in Minsk on the morning of 26 October. 

Source: European Pravda, citing Szijjártó on Facebook 

Szijjártó posted a photo from the plane on his Facebook, saying: "Two degrees below zero, fog, snowdrifts, this is Minsk."

He also said that "we want peace, and for this we need to maintain communication channels", posting a photo from a meeting with Sergei Aleinik, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus. 

Belarusian state-owned news agency BelTA reported that Szijjártó will participate in the high-level international Eurasian Security: Reality and Prospects in a Transforming World conference, which will be held in Minsk on 26-27 October.

Szijjártó is one of the speakers at the conference, BelTA writes. The organisers expect that more than 300 participants from more than 30 countries will arrive in the Belarusian capital. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will be among them.

Background: 

• Szijjártó visited Belarus in February this year. At the end of the visit, he said that Hungary and Belarus agreed to develop economic cooperation, and also called for "peace as soon as possible".
• In April, Aleinik arrived in Hungary to take part in a meeting of the intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation.
• Belarus has been supporting Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Since then, no European high-ranking official, except the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer (in April 2022) has visited Moscow or Minsk.
• Szijjártó became one of the few ministers who did not attend the meeting of the heads of foreign affairs of the European Union which took place in Kyiv on 2 October – outside the EU for the first time in history.
• Recently, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, raising expectations in the EU that Hungary will become increasingly isolated in the European Union.

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