Macron denounces the involvement of Belarus in the war to Lukashenko
President Emmanuel Macron joined his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko on the phone on Saturday evening to denounce his involvement in the war started in Ukraine by Vladimir Putin. This call is a first since the Belarusian leader’s fraudulent re-election in August 2020 and the systematic repression of the opposition organized by the regime. Relations are in fact broken between Paris and Minsk, in particular since the expulsion of the French ambassador posted in the Belarusian capital.
The Head of State asked his interlocutor ” to demand as soon as possible the withdrawal of Russian troops from its soil, which are leading to a unilateral and unjust war and underlined the need to cooperate with the international community to conduct humanitarian operations to help the Ukrainian people”, said the Elysée. The military exercises organized on Belarusian territory with Russian forces – 30,000 men – preceded the invasion of Ukraine by its northern border, two hundred kilometers from Kiev, now besieged. “Brotherhood between the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples should lead Belarus to refuse to be Russia’s vassal and de facto accomplice in the war against Ukraine”underlined the presidency.
Mr. Macron also addressed the question of the constitutional reform that the country must adopt by referendum on Sunday. This revision aims to further strengthen the powers of Lukashenko, who has only been able to cling to his post by drawing closer to Russia. She plans to put an end to the “neutrality” of the country, while again authorizing the deployment on its soil of nuclear weapons. The French President “wished to denounce the seriousness of a decision which would consist in authorizing Russia to deploy nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil”.
This warning reflects the concern of Westerners with regard to the new continental geopolitical deal, if Russia, after having vassalized Belarus, managed to take control of Ukraine. In the same vein, the Head of State joined Saturday, the presidents of Georgie Salomé Zourabichvili, and Moldova Maria Sandu. Two countries affected by “frozen conflicts” with Russia, whose eventual destabilization the Europeans fear.