Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko has accused the Ukrainian leadership of being erratic and language stressed the need to protect Belarus’ long border with Ukraine.
“Belarus’ border with Ukraine should be reliably protected,” he declared at a meeting in Luninets to discuss efforts to strengthen Belarus’ military security on 21 January, the official BelTA agency reports.
“It hurts us to watch what is happening in Ukraine. Its current political leadership, being under external control, sometimes behaves unpredictably and irrationally. Therefore, we need to get ready for this unpredictability and irrationality and, God forbid, military actions. Belarus and Ukraine have almost 1,500 km of common border, which is pretty long,” Lukashenko added.
“We should not just wait and see what is happening on this border, we should take every effort to protect it,” he stressed.
This week Russian military forces and weapons have arrived in Belarus for joint exercises, according to Belarusian, Russian and international media.
“The Russian president and I agreed in December last year to hold snap exercises on the western border of the Union State and on the southern border of Belarus, which is also the border of the Union State. Today we see the need to hold full-scale exercises in the western and southern regions,” Lukashenko said when meeting senior military figures on Jan. 17, the official Belarusian news portal reported.
“An agreement has been reached jointly with the Belarusian side that it will be necessary to engage the state’s entire military potential for joint defense,” Russian Deputy Defence Minister Fomin said Jan. 18, TASS reported.
Meanwhile, Russia’s menacing behavior towards Ukraine and the ultimatum it has sought to impose on the West has had the effect of taking some of the heat off the Lukashenko dictatorship.
The fate of hundreds of Belarusian political prisoners, suppression of civil and national liberties, and Russia’s creeping absorption of its vassal “ally,” have been temporarily obscured by the more immediate threat that Russia is posing not only to its neighbors but the Western democratic world generally.
