Sannikov reckons that there is nothing to discuss with Lukashenko

Presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov does not recognize the EU's demands for the release of political prisoners for the sake of further negotiations with Aleksandr Lukashenko.

Irina Khalip – the wife of political prisoner and presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov – has returned to Minsk from the prison in Novopolotsk, where she had a long meeting with her husband. She says that Andrei Sannikov looks well, as far as that is possible in the conditions of the prison, which is located between two oil refineries. He is also opposed to the EU demands to release political prisoners, Irina Khalip has reported:

“He is absolutely opposed even to the very idea of any kind of negociation. Would that really be about the transfer of power? In general, he says he does not recognize the demands of the European Union to release the political prisoners in order to start talking. He says, ‘How should one talk? About what? Lukashenko himself put innocent people in prison, then let them go by his own desire, and so what – is he legitimising himself in that way? He will become duly elected and the West will talk with him? You can not talk with this man – only after a change of regime will it be possible to talk’.”