Belarusian ambassador arrives in Slovakia
On October 21, the Belarusian ambassador to Slovakia, Igor Fisenko, presented his credentials to the country’s president, Peter Pellegrini. This was announced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus.
Belarus had been without an ambassador to Slovakia since 2020. Alexander Lukashenko appointed Igor Fisenko to the post on March 3, 2026—five years after the resignation of the previous ambassador, Igor Leshchenya, who in 2020 had supported calls for new, free elections in Belarus.
In the autumn of 2023, Belarus closed its embassy in Slovakia entirely. Plans to resume its operations were revealed in November 2025, with the expectation that the diplomatic mission would be up and running by September 1, 2026. Igor Fisenko had already been living in Bratislava since the spring.
Fisenko is a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and has worked for the Belarusian Foreign Ministry since 1994. He served at the Belarusian embassy in Belgium, acted as a permanent representative to the European Union and NATO, and later headed diplomatic missions in Egypt, Oman, Sudan, and Algeria. From 2019, he served as Belarus’s ambassador to France, while also representing the country in Monaco and Portugal, as well as at UNESCO in Paris. In 2021, he retained only the latter position.
In May 2025, Slovakia appointed Jozef Migaš as its ambassador to Belarus—a position he had previously held until 2020—who is known for his favorable stance toward the Lukashenko regime. He presented his credentials to Alexander Lukashenko in September of that year. Slovakia and Hungary are now the only European Union countries that have full-fledged ambassadors in Belarus.