Ukraine’s Foreign Minister demands Return of Icon that Dodik presented to Lavrov

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said the country continued to demand the return of an icon that Milorad Dodik, chairman of the BiH presidency, presented to Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister. Kuleba also said that Dodik was lying, Radio Sarajevo writes.

He reacted after Dodik’s statement yesterday that the media invented the story about the icon and that Ukraine never asked about the disappearance of the icon.

“The Ukrainian icon has burned the hands of even experienced cynical Russian diplomats who have renounced it. But Mr. Dodik continues to lie, surpassing his older friends. Ukraine continues to demand the return of the icon,” Kuleba wrote on his Twitter account.

Earlier, the Embassy of Ukraine in BiH sent a note to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of BiH with a request to return this 300-year-old gilded icon to Kiev.

After that, a case was formed in the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH in order to clarify how the icon from Lugansk reached BiH and ended up in the possession of BH official. After the scandal, the icon was returned to Dodik’s office.

Yesterday, after leaving the hospital, Dodik said that “even today, the authorities from Ukraine did not look for the icon”.

“You made a fake affair. Lavrov thought he should bring it back. It is here. I haven’t had a chance before, but I’ll call the people who gave it to me, I’ll give it back to them publicly. There’s nothing incriminating about it except your sick ambition.

“You are holding this topic to cover the shameful moves of Zeljko Komsic and Sefik Dzaferovic, ” Dodik said yesterday.