Belarus assumes chairmanship of CSTO at time of systemic crisis in international relations. During his speech the plenary session of the CSTO Collective Security Council session in Yerevan, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko stressed once again that no one needs war, everyone needs peace and it is imperative to strive for it. Belarus stands for resolving problems by means of negotiations, which cannot be said about the Ukrainian side and its incessant provocations against our country.
Ksenia Lebedeva analyzed the situation. Learn about this right now from her author’s report.
Have you ever thought that the rhetoric of Belarus throughout the entire period of its independence, our independence, has never been aggressive? We have never tried or thought to take, for example, Bialystok or Vilna, never been involved in military provocations, because we value peace, we respect our neighbors. And these neighbors, for example, Poland, look at their so-called "eastern borderlands", at our country's west and sharpen their knives, gathering the army at the borders, then they launch reconnaissance drones to the territory of Belarus, like Ukraine, then for some reason the soldiers of "non-independent country" find themselves in the territory of Belarus, and are spotted, in the sabotage work.
This incident occurred on November 19. You can see how an armed man from Ukraine crosses our border, photographs the area and lays something on the railway tracks.
Everything is fixed at our border. And every word has a confirmation. Is there any evidence from Ukraine that, for example, Belarus is shelling them? No, but it is very convenient to present information to the flock about the army that has dug in in the north of Ukraine along our borders.
They say that they prepared surprises, that is, they mined the border area, that they built a concrete wall in the Volyn Region.
And such stories are on all the TV channels of our southern neighbor. Belarus is talked about as an aggressor without citing facts. But for some reason, Ukraine's provocations and regular testing of the strength of those who are guarding the Belarusian border these days are hushed up.
I'll take the data for this year alone: At the end of January, even before the special operation, the Belarusian military shot down the first drone. From it, as well as from the subsequent ones, a memory card with photographs of the Belarusian territory was removed.
Further, on November 2, November 16, Ukrainian drones were shot down by reconnaissance aircraft in the Gomel and Brest regions.
But there are variations on the theme of provocations:
On October 29, video surveillance cameras at the Checkpoint Glushkevichi (Maidan Kopishchansky - from the Ukrainian side), recorded the movement towards the Belarusian border of a Ukrainian BTR-80 (armored personnel carrier) with a group of armed men in uniform. After stopping in front of the Ukrainian engineering barriers, the armored personnel carrier turned around and proceeded back.
From the report of the Belarusian Border Committee it is known that in response to this provocation, the servicemen of the border unit of the Republic of Belarus took up firing positions to repel possible aggression and destruction of military equipment and manpower in case of border violation. The reserves were also put on alert.
Yet, the Ukrainian military presented this situation in a different way.
Sure, they can laugh, they kill civilians, they kill their brethren people, and take fun in it. And they're also trying to open the Second Front. This is a sheer provocation.
But it's just a proof of brutishness of the Ukrainian military, that the war is a tank ride for them, like in a computer game, driving ostensibly into the territory of another state, and then tick-tock it all.
The Ukrainian leadership does not shy away from anything to stir up the conflict as much as possible and to draw other countries in. Even the threat of radiation damage to its own population does not stop them.
Last weekend, the Ukrainian Armed Forces resumed shelling the territory of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. Three shells hit the nuclear waste storage facility, six hit the nuclear power plant cooling system, and one hit the roof of Special Unit 2. At the same time, as always, Ukraine and Zelensky deny their own involvement, blaming everything on Russia.
Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus:
Today they say, this is Russia. We knew what would happen when Putin demanded those guarantees. If you knew that there would be an unacceptable conflict in Ukraine, if you knew that we would get to the rhetoric of a nuclear clash, well, spell it out on paper. Spell it out and answer. No, they didn't even want to spell it out on paper. It was that way, wasn’t it? Why do then they reproach Russia. Why couldn't we agree back then? They didn't want to or they were not allowed to. But that's not our problem. History will later determine who was right and who was wrong.It seems curious that, according to Western sources, the very idea of using radiological weapons and then blaming Russia for this was once proposed to Kiev by Polish or British consultants. The ideologists of this initiative assumed that this action was to take the conflict to a new level.
When this became apparent in "old Europe", some measures were taken there to try, through the US, to pressure the Zelensky administration to abandon the plan in order to reduce nuclear risks on the continent. This partially explains the increased diplomatic activity around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which is seen as a kind of analogue of a radiological weapon, only at a different level.
After the recent CSTO summit, Russian journalists asked our President questions about the special operation. Alexander Lukashenko stressed that, in the context Russian prisoners of war being shot by Ukrainians, yes, Ukraine is escalating the conflict.
Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus:
They're doing everything to escalate it. And this is alarming. Even small things get people excited. This shows that the Americans have a tight control over them. It is difficult to argue with Alexander Lukashenko, all the more so because the Americans themselves show interest in opening a second front and spread rumors by publishing lies in their own publications about Belarus. Is it worth believing it, asks the journalist? The President definitely says - No.
The Americans write that the Belarusian armed forces may soon enter the territory of Ukraine. Should we believe it?
Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus:
This is complete nonsense. If we engage in this conflict by force, we will not add anything to it, but only make it worse. This is not the role of Belarus in this conflict. Although I have never refused that we are taking part in a special military operation on many fronts, but we do not get involved, we do not kill anyone, we do not introduce manpower there because it is not necessary. Our armed forces, well, as many as we can use at once, 35,000-40,000, they won't solve the problem, this is not a trend today. I was saying just that. We have to negotiate. Negotiating and talking about peace is reasonable. Ukrainians as well as the Poles and Americans behind it should be exposed as they are and shown to the whole world. They don't want any peace talks. It is true that Ukraine refuses peace talks without publicizing outside pressure in this regard. They abandoned Belarus as a negotiating platform, then Turkey. Zelensky cannot break agreements with the U.S. to continue the war - it would cost him dearly, it would be cheaper to continue begging for billions of dollars worth of weapons. This year, the chairmanship of the CSTO passed from Yerevan to Minsk. Lukashenko made it clear to all present at the summit that we will do everything to end the conflicts in our region.
Belarus, for its part, continues to do its utmost for peace.
Since the conflict began in 2014, our rhetoric, our President's rhetoric, has not changed. We are for peace. And we're not going to fight. But we can protect ourselves if something happens.












