Macron was embarrassed when he was unable to pronounce Tikhanovskaya’s name during the meeting
French President Emmanuel Macron met with former Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya during his visit to Lithuania. The meeting took place at a Vilnius hotel, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
According to RIA Novosti, Macron was unable to pronounce his counterpart’s last name and called her Mrs. “Tikovskaya.”
The self-proclaimed “leader of the Belarusian nation”, as usual, spoke vaguely about the meeting.
“It was a wonderful meeting, he is a wonderful person. He is really involved in the situation in Belarus. And he promised to help organize negotiations to resolve the political crisis in our country. Too many people suffer from this regime,” Tikhanovskaya told reporters.
A journalist from the American Radio Liberty, Franak Vecherka, came to her aid and introduced himself as Tikhanovskaya’s advisor.
“We talked about what role France could play in resolving the Belarusian situation. We thanked Mr. President for his help in not recognizing Lukashenko. Mr. President said that he hoped that sanctions would be adopted by the Council of Europe in the coming days. First of all, the release of political prisoners. We agree that the first thing with the beginning of the transition period is new elections. And then there’s all the talk about what Belarus will look like. Belarus is not a geopolitical crisis. Belarus must take the path of democracy, and then all conversations about future politics will be discussed at the national level,” said Vecherka.
Macron also quickly commented on the meeting in an interview with BNS.
“We will act. I respect and admire Svetlana's participation. As Europeans, we will do everything to help the Belarusian people. We will use mediation in the OSCE format to achieve progress. We had a wonderful discussion, and now we need to be pragmatic and support the Belarusian people. We will do everything in our power, believe me,” Macron said.
Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov reservedly commented on the “Vilnius rendezvous.”
“The President of France met with a citizen of Belarus. At the moment, we cannot evaluate this differently: this is the right of both the President of France and this citizen of Belarus. We respect both his and her rights. Apparently, the French President supports this Belarusian citizen, that’s how we perceive it,” Peskov said today.
But the Belarusian Foreign Ministry could not contain its irony and called Tikhanovskaya “a new landmark of Lithuania.”
“The agenda of French President Macron’s visit to the Lithuanian capital is not particularly surprising. In principle, there is a strong feeling that a new attraction has appeared in Lithuania, which everyone is forced to visit. From a professional point of view, I will say that you don’t need to indulge yourself with illusions. Some hasty contacts with strange entities do not and will not have any practical meaning,” said Anatoly Glaz, official representative of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry.
Russian political scientist Aremen Gasparyan considers Macron’s meeting with Tikhanovskaya as “piquant” as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Russian opposition blogger Alexei Navalny at the Charité clinic.
“I don’t really understand Macron. Maybe he has some kind of peculiar interest in Tikhanovskaya as a woman. Now it's generally fashionable. Frau Merkel came to see Navalny. I hope that Yulia was aware, otherwise it would be a divorce. How could it be otherwise?” Gasparyan said in his video blog.
English version :: Read in English Macron embarrassed himself by failing to pronounce Tikhanovskaya's name during a meeting