The president denied that Belarus was taking part in the fighting, adding that no missiles were being fired from Belarusian territory • "Nuclear war is the end of everything"
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko warned that Western sanctions were pushing Russia into a "third world war", as the Washington Post reported on Sunday that Belarus was preparing to send troops to Ukraine.
"In a situation like this, we should know that there are sanctions like this. A lot is being said about the banking sector. Gas, oil, SWIFT. It's worse than war," Lukashenko told Belarus's constitution. Said in a referendum on the change, according to the president's website. "Russia is being pushed into the Third World War. We must be very safe and stay away from it. Because nuclear war is the end of everything."
The Belarusian president said retaliatory sanctions by Russia and Belarus would be too sensitive to ensure that they do not affect them as well.
Lukashenko claimed that the US is the "sole beneficiary" of the current conflict, adding that the US aims to "put Europe in its place and remove the competitors".
"Today we must stop the war," Lukashenko voted in the referendum. "I wouldn't even call it a 'war' right now: it's still a conflict. There will be a day or two more war. In three days - a meat grinder." The Belarusian president said Russia aims to "restore Ukraine", without specifying what it would be restored to.
Lukashenko denied that Belarus was participating in the fighting, saying that no missiles were being fired from Belarusian territory, except for "two or three rockets", which were fired from the Ukrainian missile battery near the country's border on 23 February. was allegedly detected.
"Russia doesn't need it. They have ammunition, cartridges, machine guns and enough people to solve the problems that Russia wants to solve," he claimed, who beat and poisoned Belarusians and Russians in Ukraine. was being given. "They started beating them, poisoning them. They threaten us with terrorist acts."
According to TASS, Igor Karpenko, the chairman of the country's Central Election Commission (CEC), said on Sunday that nearly two-thirds of Belarusians expressed support for the adoption of a new constitution that would abolish its non-nuclear status. .
The Belarusian president insisted that the country would only ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to transfer nuclear weapons to Belarus if such weapons were transferred by the West to Poland or Lithuania.
According to TASS, on Sunday, Putin placed Russia's strategic deterrence forces, which contain nuclear weapons, on a "special service regime". He said the move was due to "aggressive statements" by NATO leaders.
Lukashenko said that in the near future additional weapons will be transferred from Russia to Belarus. He warned that Belarusian troops were ready to deploy in a matter of hours "if necessary".
"In the near future - we already know what additional equipment we need - we will agree with Putin and we will transfer from Russia additional suitable weapons, which can cause such unacceptable damage that neither the Poles nor the Lithuanians Would like to fight with us, ”warned the President of Belarus.
"It is very clear" that "the Belarusian capital of Minsk is now an extension of the Kremlin," a US administration official spoke to The Washington Post on condition of anonymity. The official said Belarusian troops could deploy to Ukraine as soon as Monday.