According to the President of Belarus, when on February 24 Moscow’s operation in the country took place, the Ukrainian armed forces were preparing for a “devastating strike against the territory of Russia in the neighboring regions”.
Speaking to the press after visiting the Far East space launch center and speaking with his Russian counterpart, Lukashenko said the US government is pushing Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states into a confrontation with his country.
For his part, Putin said that Moscow and Minsk should step up their integration in light of the full-scale sanctions war unleashed against both countries by the West.
“We will continue to resist together any attempt to slow our countries’ development or artificially isolate them from the world economy,” he said.
Russia will not isolate itself and it is impossible to isolate it, said Putin (+photo)
According to Putin, clash with anti-Russian forces was only a matter of time (+photo)
OPEC warns of consequences of sanctions against Russia
The Russian leader said there was no point in trying to isolate the two nations as their economies are closely linked by many ties.
In response to another question from journalists, he said that at that point Kyiv had stalled the process of peace negotiations with Moscow and deviated from the agreements reached at the Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul.
He reminded that when consulting this Turkish city, Moscow and Kyiv reached a certain level of agreements that included security guarantees for Ukraine that would not extend to the territory of Crimea, Sevastopol and Donbass.
Putin warned that later, when the conditions for the continuation of the dialogue were created, the provocation with the civilian deaths in Bucha emerged, an act of which Russian soldiers are accused without evidence of authorship, and the Ukrainian side deviated from their Istanbul agreements.
“Now security requirements are one thing, but issues of regulating relations regarding Crimea, Sevastopol and Donbass will be taken out of the scope of these agreements. In other words, we are once again at a dead end for ourselves and for everyone,” he said.
According to the Russian President, this Tuesday his Belarusian counterpart gave him evidence about the truth of what happened in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
He noted that the information provided to the Russian security service shows who arrived in this city by what means of transport and how the conditions were created to organize this provocation and forgery.
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