Lukashenko Talks With Putin About Western ‘Attack Plans’ Against Russia

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said today that he had discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday about “plans” to attack Russia which he said were being prepared by the West amid the war in Ukraine.

“For some time now, and we discussed this in detail yesterday with the Russian president, strategic plans to attack Russia have been established,” Lukashenko said, according to the Belarusian news agency Belta, who had a telephone conversation yesterday, Monday, with Putin.

These “plans” envisage attacks “passing through Ukraine and Belarus,” Lukashenko said. “History repeats itself,” he concluded, a reference to the invasions of Russia by Napoleon I and Nazi Germany.

Lukashenko, who once moved between Europe and Moscow, has sided with Russia and supports its attack on Ukraine, mainly by allowing Moscow to use Belarusian territory as a rearguard base.

Last month, Putin announced that Moscow would supply Belarus with nuclear-capable missiles “in the coming months.”

Because of its support for Moscow and the crackdown on the massive dissent movement in 2020, Belarus has been targeted by Western sanctions, which further increase its dependence on Russia.

Belarus is facing a “hybrid war” and the actions of the West “bring the world close to the abyss of a great war that cannot have a winner,” Lukashenko added.

Separately echoing that rhetoric, Russian diplomatic spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, for her part, accused the United States and its allies of a “hybrid confrontation” with Russia, “which is dangerously close to an open military confrontation with our country “.

That would mean “an armed conflict between nuclear powers. Obviously, such a conflict would involve a risk of nuclear escalation,” he added in a statement blaming Japan’s support for its Western allies against Russia.

Since the beginning of the invasion, Moscow has repeatedly insisted, in a more or less direct way, on the nuclear threat, which Western countries see as an attempt to intimidate them into dissuading them from supporting Kiev.