Swedish charge d'affaires expected to arrive in Minsk soon

Sweden's charge d'affaires will soon arrive in Minsk, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, April 9.

 "After some difficulties, we will soon send a charge back to run our Embassy in Minsk in Belarus," Mr. Bildt said. "Good for everyone". The Swedish embassy in Minsk and the Belarusan embassy in Stockholm were closed in August 2012 amid a diplomatic row that followed the expulsion of Swedish Ambassador Stefan Eriksson.

Let us recall that Mr. Eriksson was expelled from Belarus a few weeks after a July 4, 2012 incident in which two representatives of Sweden's ad agency Studio Total illegally flew a small plane from Lithuania to Belarus and dropped hundreds of teddy bears containing pro-human rights messages on the Belarusan territory.
According to BelaPAN, Aliaksandr Lukashenka later denied a link between the expulsion of the ambassador and the toy drop.

The Belarusan foreign ministry announced on August 3 that the Belarusan authorities had denied an accreditation extension to Mr. Eriksson.
"He has worked in Belarus for about seven years, which is a long period," Mr. Savinykh said. "However, all his activities were aimed at destroying Belarusan-Swedish relations, not at strengthening them."