Status: 05/05/2022 9:43 p.m
For more than two months Russia has been at war with Ukraine. Belarusian ruler Lukashenko, one of President Putin’s closest allies, has now admitted that he expected the war to take a different course.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has admitted that he expected Russia to win quickly over Ukraine. “I’m not familiar enough with this problem to say whether it’s going according to plan, as the Russians say,” the ruler said in an interview with the AP news agency. But: “I have the feeling that this operation has dragged on.”
Russia also began its invasion of Ukraine ten weeks ago from Belarusian territory. The soldiers had previously been sent to Belarus under the pretext of military maneuvers. In early March, Lukashenko said at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that Ukraine wanted to attack Belarus. The Russian attack thwarted this. Lukashenko did not provide any evidence of this.
“Thanks to me, negotiations have started”
Lukashenko has now accused Ukraine of provoking Russia and stressed that Russia cannot lose the war. For its part, Belarus is doing everything possible to end the war: “We categorically do not accept war. We have done everything and are doing everything to ensure that there is no war,” said Lukashenko, claiming to have been the initiator of negotiations. “Thanks to yours truly, me, negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have started.”
Lukashenko criticized the government in Kyiv: “Why is Ukraine, on whose territory the war is actually taking place – military actions, people are dying – why is Ukraine not interested in these negotiations?” he asked.
“US wants to drown Russia”
Lukashenko rejected the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. After all, Ukraine is a neighboring country. “We don’t live behind the ocean like the United States,” he said. Only the government in Moscow can answer the question of whether Russia is capable of such an operation.
Lukashenko said he did not believe that Putin wanted a conflict with NATO. The West must ensure that it does not come to that. This is heating up the conflict between Russia and Ukraine – especially the USA. “The United States wants to seize the moment, tie its allies to itself and drown Russia in the war with Ukraine. That’s their goal – weed out Russia, and then China,” he said. According to Lukashenko, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is acting on orders from the United States.