MOSCOW, November 23. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko decides on his own with whom to conduct a dialogue, but it's unlikely he’ll hold any talks with ex-presidential candidate and opposition figurehead Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said commenting on Lukashenko’s remarks on the possibility of dialogue with her.
Earlier, the Belarusian leader told BBC that he would begin dialogue with the opposition, in particular, with its leader Tikhanovskaya, when Russian President Vladimir Putin "sits down at the negotiating table" with Russian blogger Alexey Navalny. At the same time, Lukashenko stressed that for Putin, Navalny is not an opposition figure, but a traitor to Russia’s interests.
"Alexander Grigorievich [Lukashenko] seems to have put it very colorfully that it [dialogue] is categorically impossible and there is no topic whatsoever to talk to Ms. Tikhanovskaya about. This is, perhaps, how this should be interpreted," Putin’s press secretary suggested.
In response to a question on whether Putin, in his private conversations with Lukashenko, had urged his counterpart not to conduct negotiations with the opposition, the Kremlin official noted that "here one cannot talk about any pressure because the Belarusian president is the president of a sovereign country and decides for himself with whom to hold any dialogue and for what purpose".