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West readies provocations to destabilize CIS — secretary general

Sergei Lebedev said that attempts to destabilize the situation in the Commonwealth are obvious and are not hidden

MOSCOW, April 20. /TASS/. The West is plotting provocations to destabilize the situation in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and is not even trying to hide this fact, CIS Secretary General Sergey Lebedev said in an interview with TASS.

"Such evidence, unfortunately, exists. Moreover, these attempts to destabilize the situation in the Commonwealth are obvious and are not being hidden," Lebedev said when asked whether the post-Soviet bloc has any information indicating that the West is cooking up new provocations on the territory of a CIS country.

"The President of the Republic of Belarus [Alexander Lukashenko] has repeatedly spoken about this, about that dangerous concentration of armed forces on the border with Belarus, about the schemes of the Belarusian opposition, which used to speak about a legitimate ascent to power in Minsk, but now talk about a possible armed seizure of power using those battalions that are now fighting in Ukraine, the so-called Kastus Kalinouski battalion, and some others," he added.

In other words, such attempts and "a desire to destabilize the situation [on the part of the West]" are real, the secretary general stressed.

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