MINSK, 5 May (BelTA) – Russia and Ukraine could have come to terms on all issues even before the conflict but provocations from the Ukrainian side began. Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko made the statement in an interview with Associated Press, BelTA has learned.
Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “I strongly regret what is going on in Ukraine. But it is not up to me. It is up to the leadership of Ukraine and first and foremost the president.”
He pointed out that the West prefers not to talk about the initial reasons behind Russia's special military operation in Donbass and about what had preceded those events. “I don't understand why Ukrainians had to provoke Russia. They had been moving towards being able to come to terms on all issues. I say it as a man in the know. I was constantly involved in this process. I am immersed into it more deeply than anyone else. And I saw it was possible to come to terms,” the president said. “I saw it all starting with personal insults targeted at Russia's leadership and ending with various kinds of economic provocations, pressure, and bullying of Russian people in Ukraine. I only fail to understand why Ukraine needed it. Thus, Ukraine provoked the Russian Federation. It got what it wanted.”
Aleksandr Lukashenko remarked that the United States of America had been pushing Ukraine towards a conflict because such a turn of events was advantageous for them from the point of view of geopolitics.
