“One thoughtless word, one move could provoke an armed conflict, up to the use of nuclear weapons,” Lukashenko, a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the All-Belarus People’s Assembly Congress.
The All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, the country’s highest constitutional body, made up of some 1,200 delegates, is set to approve an updated national security concept and military doctrine for Belarus, which describes NATO’s expansion into former communist Eastern Europe as a danger to peace. Moscow has a similar point of view.
Lukashenko warned, in the speech carried by the Belarusian press, that, in the event of an increase in internal tensions in Russia, Moscow could use its entire arsenal.
“This will be the apocalypse,” said Lukashenko, whose re-election in 2020 has not been recognized by the US and the European Union, after unprecedented mass protests in Belarus challenging his election in a vote that the opposition considers to have been rigged by to the regime.
The conflict in Ukraine, Belarus’s southern neighbor, represents the biggest threat to national security, Lukashenko said, accusing the West of trying to draw Minsk into this war.
Although Belarus has not intervened directly since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, its territory has been used as a staging area for Russian forces. From Belarusian territory, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine from the northern direction, and meanwhile Moscow placed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Russia will not withdraw from the occupied Ukrainian territories, says Lukashenko
At the same time, Aleksandr Lukashenko declared that Moscow will not withdraw from the areas it has occupied in Ukraine.
“The Russians will not disappear from Crimea (annexed in 2014, no) or from the eastern regions” of Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk, annexed in 2022, no), he said.
Russia also annexed the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson, from the south of Ukraine, in September of the same year, but, apart from Crimea, it only partially controls these regions.
In his opinion, this means that the time has come for discussions. “If Ukraine wants to survive as a state, Moscow and the West should agree on a draw,” he said.
Ukrainian leaders, however, insist that the war will continue until Russian forces withdraw from the entire Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean Peninsula, while Moscow claims that Kiev must accept the “situation on the ground”, meaning the annexation of the five regions.
Lukashenko accuses the opposition of planning to seize a district in Belarus and ask for NATO support
At the same time, the Belarusian president stated that his country faces serious threats, both internally and externally, which have led it to change its security posture and allow Russia to deploy dozens of tactical nuclear weapons on its territory his, according to Reuters.
Russia’s TASS news agency quoted Lukashenko as saying dozens of Russian tactical nuclear weapons had been deployed to Belarus under an agreement he and Putin announced last year – the first time Russia has deployed nuclear missiles to another country. country from the Soviet era.
Lukashenko said, without providing evidence, that the Belarusian opposition was planning to seize a district in the west of the country and request the support of NATO troops – a claim dismissed by the opposition as ridiculous.
At the same meeting, Ivan Tertel, head of Belarus’s KGB security service, said his agents had thwarted attacks on the capital Minsk by drones launched from NATO member Lithuania, which has denied organizing such an attack.
Tertel also said that Belarusian security is working daily to thwart what he called constant attempts to smuggle weapons into Belarus from Ukraine “to carry out terrorist and sabotage attacks.”
“Lukasenko lives in his own world”
“I think it is the task of a psychotherapist to comment on Lukashenko, because he lives in his own world. It seems that he is losing touch with reality”, said Franak Viacorka, one of the main advisers of the opposition leader Svetlana Tihanovskaia, who is in exile.
“This Congress was a desperate attempt to restore confidence internally, but also to show the outside world that it still has supporters. Of course, the easiest way to unite supporters around him is to create the feeling of an external enemy,” he told Reuters.
Asked about the KGB chief’s claim that Belarus had thwarted drone attacks launched from Lithuania, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk warned against falling into the Belarusian and Russian propaganda race.
“These people are doing everything to destabilize the European Union and NATO. Every message from the Russian Federation or Belarus must be treated as a propaganda element, not as a factual element,” he said at a press conference in Warsaw.
Photo: Profimedia Images
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Tags: Move Risks Nuclear Apocalypse Putin Ally Aleksan Warns
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