VIENNA, February 14./TASS/. Russia did not take part in OSCE consultations requested by Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to discuss ‘unusual military activity’ of Belarus, since the request addressed Minsk, not Moscow, Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the Russian delegation to the Vienna talks on security and arms control, told TASS on Monday.
"We did not take part in these consultations. Belarusian representatives did," Gavrilov said.
The request form the Baltic States was addressed only to Belarus, and did not concern Russia. A meeting of the interested OSCE member countries discussed the abidance by the Vienna Document on confidence-building and security measures.
A statement from the Belarusian delegation circulated by the Belarusian Embassy in Vienna said that Minsk "does not engage in any significant military activity requiring prior notification and does not consider it justified to invoke the Vienna document mechanism".
"Belarus undertook a number of practical steps to increase transparency and confidence-building with regard to the joint Belarussian-Russian military exercise "Union Resolve-2022," it stressed.