Lukashenka on nuclear weapons and Putin. What do they say about the message?
The presidential address to the Belarusian people and the National Assembly is a standard annual event that takes place in Belarus in late April or early May. However, since 2020, Alexander Lukashenko cancels the feature or transfers it to other dates and to other rooms. Since 2020, he has not come to parliament. This year, Lukashenka delivered his message on March 31 at the Palace of the Republic, where more than two thousand people gathered – not only deputies (there are 110 in Belarus), but also propagandists, people who publicly support the regime in power.
“We won’t stop for nothing”
The theme of Lukashenka’s message was “conditions for maintaining sovereignty and independence”. And almost a week after Putin’s statement, he finally commented on plans to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus. Lukashenka called “crazy” those who “before him” signed obligations to remove nuclear weapons from the territory of Belarus. “Do I have the right to raise the issue of the return of nuclear weapons?” he addressed the audience. According to him, he “saved all these sites “where before “nuclear warheads were deployed in the Topol missile system and ordered the military to restore them a week ago. “It will be necessary, Putin and I will decide and introduce strategic weapons here as well. (…) We will stop at nothing to defend our states and our peoples,” he said.
How did experts react to the threat of deploying Russian strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus? “Lukashenko had full support and full support for Russia in this war. And he sees the appearance of nuclear weapons on his territory as another guarantee of maintaining his own regime and, consequently, of security,” says Pavel Slyunkin, associate analyst at the Council European Foreign Affairs.
Grigory Nizhnikov, an expert at the Finnish Institute of International Relations, believes that “Lukashenko understands sovereignty like Louis XIV. Sovereignty is me. That is, if I exist, there is sovereignty. And what happens next, it doesn’t matter to him.” “He appeals to Putin, knowing full well that if he still has sovereignty, it is only through domestic political and economic decisions. And foreign policy has already become a function of the Kremlin’s foreign policy,” says the expert.
“I brought them here”
In his speech, Lukashenka explained at length to the public why the West left Russia no other options than an attack on Ukraine and urged the parties to negotiate: “The military-industrial complex in Russia is unfolding in full force, if the cart Russian roll by inertia, it will not seem enough “. According to Lukashenka, counting on victory over a state with nuclear weapons is madness.
“At the beginning of his speech, he said that the counter-offensive is dangerous, from his point of view. That is, Ukraine should not liberate its territories. According to Alexander Lukashenko, it should sit down at the negotiating table, because if the counter-offensive is suddenly successful, there will be a risk that Russia will use more dangerous weapons, possibly nuclear”, Slyunkin comments on Lukashenka’s words.
In the message, Lukashenka said that he himself controls the troops that are on the territory of Belarus: “Do not worry that Russia captured something here, all these Russian units are trained by 500 Belarusian officers, do not scare people that Putin captured the Belarus here, I control these troops, which are located on the territory of Belarus (…) I’m the one who brought them here to train, prepare, equip and work together if we have to do that.”
“He is just doing self-hypnosis,” believes Grigory Nizhnikov. “After all, Belarusians are afraid. Even the first question that came from the audience was about nuclear weapons.” The expert calls the gun control stories “tales about a white bull, because there is no control over Russian conventional weapons”. “As for nuclear weapons, Belarus will not come close to it,” Nizhnikov is sure.
Political prisoners are not a current problem for Lukashenka
Lukashenko did not recall the events of 2020 in his speech, he only mentioned that he sometimes cannot sleep, remembering “those crazy days”. He told the audience in the hall that “we survived by the majority” and “it is time for them to publicly admit their defeat”.
However, as a “winner”, he showed no willingness to release political prisoners. When asked by the audience about the fate of journalist Andrzej Poczobut, sentenced to 8 years, for whom Poland stood up, saying that he would open the Bobrovniki border crossing the day after his release, Lukashenka just laughed. “How can you trade a person for a piece of the border?” he said and offered to exchange Poczobut for opposition politician Pavel Latushko and his team.
Slyunkin draws attention to the fact that the topic of political prisoners was raised only at the end of the speech, when Lukashenka answered questions from the audience. “It indicates how irrelevant the subject is to him now. (…) Showed complete unpreparedness for any constructive discussion on this topic, offering to exchange political prisoners for political leaders who are political refugees, by the way, in Poland and other states,” he says.
“A bunch of meaningless theses”
Lukashenka announced the country’s turn to the East and spoke a lot about conspiracy theories – mainly related to the role of the United States. “I think that today we saw a rather sincere Lukashenka in general, who, as usual, contradicts himself. There are a lot of meaningless theses that do not coincide with reality, a lot of lies. But that’s how he sees it. convince that something is true, so convince himself from the opposite point of view. He really sees the world that way. And I think that in this sense they have a lot in common with Putin in recent years, “says Pavel Slyunkin.
Grigory Nizhnikov finds it surprising that Lukashenka’s message “in principle, there was nothing to say” at a time when the war has been going on for more than a year. He notes that the central part of the speech was devoted to the economy: “It seems that we are back in the 2010s, and there are no more problems in the courtyard. Lukashenka repeated all those theses that he uttered year after year. And it became for me the main revelation. Apparently , the person really has nothing to say.”
Source: DW
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