MINSK, August 9. /TASS/. Political relations between Minsk and Kiev are at the lowest level they have ever been, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Monday.

"The Belarusian-Ukrainian political relations are at their lowest point, which cannot be said about the economic relations so far," he said. "The political relations are at a very low level, with the red line being crossed when Ukraine halted air service with us even before the European Union did it. What for? Why did it opt to indulge in such vileness and wreck everything we have had? Everything we did for Ukraine. Ukraine crossed a red line," he said.

"I am an experienced man and have seen much. While we will survive this, but it is bad for the Ukrainian people," Lukashenko added.

Ukraine stopped its air service with Belarus on May 26 following the emergency landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk and the detention of its passenger Roman Protasevich, a co-founder of the NEXTA Telegram channel, which is recognized as extremist in Belarus. Protasevich was aboard a passenger jet belonging to Ryanair, an Irish low-cost airline, performing a flight from Athens to Vilnius on May 23, when it made an emergency landing at Minsk International Airport after a bomb threat on board the plane had been reported. No bomb was found. Protasevich, currently living in Lithuania and wanted in Belarus, was detained after the airliner had landed in the Belarusian capital.