Journalists and researchers have the facts that he visited Belarus during an official business trip.
Politician from the far-right German party AfD (Alternative for Germany) Petr Bystron, probably used a business trip to Lithuania to visit Belarus at the end of last year.
This is reported by the publication RND with reference to the research of the non-profit research center Correctiv and the Lithuanian television company LRT< /strong>. According to them, he hid this part of the trip in the report on the business trip provided to the leadership of the Bundestag.
According to a source in the Lithuanian border authorities, the AfD deputy entered Belarus on November 16 in the border town of Medininkai from Lithuania and returned on November 19. On the way back at the Bystron border crossing, the border guards checked and wrote down the name of the driver who accompanied Bystron.
The border guards refused to officially confirm this information, stressing that they only provide data on border crossings to state bodies in exceptional situations.
The purpose of the AfD deputy's visit to Belarus remained unclear. Bystron himself did not respond to the journalists' written request.
Bystron is the AfD representative in the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee.
Head of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee Michael Roth (SPD) called the information about the trip “a very unpleasant phenomenon.”
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“On November 9, 2022, Mr. Bystron submitted an application to the President of the Bundestag for approval of an individual business trip to Vilnius/Lithuania from November 14 to 16, 2022. Neither in the application for a business trip, nor in the “travel description” that he provided later, there is no mention of a trip to Belarus,” explains Roth, the head of the committee on foreign affairs.
Belarus supports Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and therefore also subject to EU sanctions.
Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Member of the Bundestag from the CSU Thomas Erndl was precisely to those who approved AfD politician Bystron's application for a trip to Lithuania in November.
“If I had known at the time that Bystron was also planning to go to Belarus, I would not have supported the travel request,” Erndl told Correctiv and LRT, adding that he felt cheated by Bystron and would definitely discuss the action politics in parliamentary groups, since trips to Belarus “are not in the interests of the entire German Bundestag”.
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In 2018, representatives of the “Alternative for Germany” party visited the Crimea annexed by Russia, and in 2022 they planned a trip to Donbas, which is occupied by Russian troops.
