Belarusian leader: Russia hasn't asked Minsk to enter war directly, fearing NATO intervention
Self-proclaimed Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has said that Russia has never asked Belarus to directly join the war against Ukraine, fearing it could prompt a NATO response.
Source: Lukashenko in an interview with Time, the full text of which was released on the Belarusian presidential website
Details: Lukashenko claimed that Belarus's involvement in active combat would have had very different political and military consequences.
"Russia fully understands – and we understand even more – that if we openly join this war, it will create more problems. Russia knows how difficult it would be for us to hold that border, especially since we wouldn’t be fighting only Ukrainians. It would trigger the deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine," he said.
In his opinion, large numbers of foreign soldiers – Germans, French, British, and others – would arrive in Ukraine under the guise of volunteers.
"We would have to fight NATO troops here. We’re fully aware of this. On top of that, missiles would be launched against Belarus. That’s very close. We understand that – and so do the Russians," Lukashenko said.
He added that this issue is not even being discussed with the Russian leadership.
"By the way, the [former] CIA director, Mr Burns, came to visit us. I told him directly: we’re not going to fight or cross the border, but we are helping the Russians here. His main question was whether Belarus might get drawn into the war, whether we’d cross the border, and so on. I told him: ‘Look, we haven’t even had that kind of conversation with Russia,’" the Belarusian leader claimed.
Background:
- Recently, Lukashenko once again called on the European Union to abandon confrontation and cooperate with Russia.
- On 26 June, Lukashenko publicly reflected on the reasons why Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan refused to visit Belarus for the summit of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).
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