© Reuters
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In an interview with a Russian state agency, Alexander Lukashenko said that Crimea was “de facto” and “legally” Russian territory and that he had agreed with President Vladimir Putin to visit the peninsula together. According to international law and the United Nations, this is the territory of Ukraine seized by force and annexed by Russia.
In addition, Lukashenko said he could ask Russia to deploy nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory if American nuclear bombs and missiles appear in neighboring Poland.
The state news agency BelTA quoted him from a conversation with Dmitry Kiselyov, director general of the Russia Today International News Agency and often referred to as “Putin’s mouthpiece.” “Crimea is de facto Russian Crimea. After the referendum, Crimea de jure became Russian,” Lukashenko said. It is not clear whether this position will be formalized in an official position of Belarus.
Until August last year, he said he was refraining from recognizing the peninsula as part of Russia because of the threat of sanctions. After new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky refused to recognize him as president and Kiev joined EU and US sanctions against Minsk, relations deteriorated sharply. However, in August 2021, Lukashenko said he would recognize the annexation when the “last Russian oligarch” began delivering his products there. Currently, many companies in Russia refrain from such activities in order not to be sanctioned.
Now Lukashenko added in an interview that he intends to visit the peninsula, starting in Sevastopol. There is an agreement with Putin on this, he added, but did not specify deadlines. The arrival of the two would mean recognition by Belarus of Crimea as part of Russia, but this issue does not generally stand between him and Putin, BelTA adds. I have every right to go there, “whose protectorate or under whose leadership it is.”
Mr Lukashenko also said that if Germany refused to have US nuclear weapons on its territory and part of them were transferred to Poland, he would offer Putin to send Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus.
The country has been part of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since 1993, but now he says that “as a good landlord, I have not destroyed anything, all the barns are in place, we are ready.”
The issue arose after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on November 19th that US nuclear weapons stationed in Europe could end up in Eastern European member states if Germany no longer wanted them. According to a 1991 document, a united Germany renounced the production and use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in exchange for the deployment of a NATO nuclear arsenal in the western part of the country.
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Minsk acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear state, and the withdrawal of the remaining Soviet-era nuclear weapons was completed in November 1996.
The Foreign Ministry in Minsk wrote on its website that the country “is ready to develop and strengthen the mechanisms of the NPT, to increase its efficiency and to promote consensus results from the tenth conference for monitoring compliance with the treaty, which is scheduled for January-February 2022. in New York. “
Mr Lukashenko has said he regrets Belarus’ nuclear-free status, calling the withdrawal of Soviet weapons a mistake in 2010. “The removal under these conditions, carried out by our nationalists, was the worst mistake. I had to sign this agreement because I had nowhere to go – I was pressured by both Russia and the Americans – take it out because you promised. It shouldn’t have happened. is the greatest wealth, an expensive commodity that we eventually had to sell at a decent price, “BelTA quoted him as saying.
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