Belarus’s authoritarian leader, Aliaksandr Lukashenko, promises that Russia will not attack states bordering Belarus by using Belarusian territory, reports Polish news agency PAP.
He made the remarks on Saturday at a harvest festival in the Grodno region. He said fears that Russia might attack other countries from Belarusian territory were “complete nonsense”.
“Russia is not going to attack Poland, Lithuania, Latvia or Ukraine through Belarus. Utter nonsense! Nobody in Belarus is going to go to war with its neighbours and NATO without you and me knowing. They are the ones who have set themselves the goal today of strangling us with Russia and are looking for a reason to do so. It’s simple – they are looking for a reason to reproach us for something,” Lukashenko said.
On illegal migration through Belarus, Lukashenko said that Belarus has no interest in creating tensions at the border, but neither is it going to help European countries in this situation.
“They have imposed sanctions on us and we are supposed to defend them? This will not happen, we have been open about it”, he said.
Lukashenko also explained that the city of Most, where the harvest festival took place, is more attractive than Paris and that the Belarusian authorities know how to “build bridges”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has used Belarusian territory to train troops and supply weapons before invading Ukraine in February 2022. In addition, military exercises between Russia and Belarus have taken place in the regions of Belarus bordering Ukraine and Poland. And in 2023, the Kremlin deployed some of its tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.
Earlier, Lukashenko promised that the Kremlin would not invade Ukraine from Belarus, but in 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, from Belarus.
Karolis Broga (PAP (EN))
