At the meeting of the Belarusian Minister of Internal Affairs, Ivan Kurbakov, and the Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of Serbia Alexander Vulin new cooperation between Serbia and Belarus in joint training of the police, special units and training in the field of combating terrorism, organized crime and high-tech crime was agreed. Both Kurbakov and Vulin are under sanctions SAD.
Kurbakov is under sanctions by the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom and has been named as a person responsible for repression and a campaign of intimidation by police forces following the 2020 presidential election in Belarus, in particular for arbitrary arrests and violence against peaceful protesters and to journalists, he writes Radio Free Europe.
Vulin is also on the list of sanctions of the United States of America, among other things, due to close ties with Russia.
Kurbakov and Vulin agreed that the two countries "face similar security threats and challenges and emphasized the successful cooperation of the Serbian and Belarusian security structures and the need for its improvement."
Vulin also attended the demonstration exercise of the special unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus.
Belarus is under European Union sanctions for its role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and President Alexander Lukashenko is one of the few allies in the world of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Serbia selectively harmonized with the European Union in the introduction of sanctions against Belarus.
Thus, in 2022, it harmonized with the sanctions introduced due to the involvement of Belarus in the Russian aggression against Ukraine, but not the following year with the expansion of those sanctions.
Vulin is on a three-day visit to Belarus, during which he also met with the Minister of Defense of Belarus, Viktor Hrenin, and the Director of the Belarusian Security Service, Ivan Tertel.