Lukashenko calls for joint efforts of CSTO leaders against pressure, outside interference

“Color revolutions which have been going on in a number of countries are not color revolutions at all. We can see it on Belarus' example,” the president said. “A revolution happens when there is a reason for a revolution (we have studied it), when the masses don't want anything, when the leaders can't do anything and so on, and when there are revolutionaries. Neither you nor us have revolutionaries today. All the so-called revolutionaries want to live well and, preferably, at somebody else's expense. When you start using their language to talk to them, the so-called revolutionaries quickly turn into exiled politicians. Therefore, they have never had any good intentions.”

According to Aleksandr Lukashenko, outside interference has been a reason for the escalation of the situation in Belarus. “The case is that, I am quoting here, ‘the Belarusian lands historically belonged to Poland'. This is being said in an open regime. Can I, as president, and the Belarusian people agree with that? They say that the place where we are living in does not belong to us. It is clear to whom they belong. And they are acting accordingly,” the head of state said.

Aleksandr Lukashenko said that the NATO is setting up a military group for the penetration of western Belarusian lands. “Tell me, how we should respond to that,” he said.

Apart from that, the president recalled old plans of western countries to create a sanitary belt between the EU and Russia. “These are the goals that they failed to achieve after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the mid-1990s. The president of Russia and I understand it very well. The events in Belarus (they are openly saying that) are a trampoline for putting pressure on the Russian Federation,” the head of state stressed. “I want to say in a friendly way: if someone thinks that Belarus is far away…Some time ago we were not thinking about it either. Even the events in Ukraine – we were thinking that it was going on somewhere else. Before you know it, something like that will happen in your countries.”

Aleksandr Lukashenko is convinced that the CSTO countries should join efforts against external threats using the Belarusian experience among other things. “Everybody have said that, now we need to be together more than ever,” he said.

According to the president, economic cooperation is the foundation of unity. “If we work together in the economy, and it was our goal in the Eurasian Economic Union, we will survive. If we don't, they will swallow us,” the Belarusian leader concluded.