Putin ally warns of World War III if West continues aid to Ukraine
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally — warned Western nations of a coming World War III, unless they stop supplying Ukraine with weapons.
Lukashenko, 68, raised the specter of a global conflict in a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, which was released Monday.
“Belarus calls on the countries of the world to unite and prevent the regional conflict in Europe from escalating into a full-scale world war!” he wrote, according to reporting by Newsweek.
A broad coalition of nations, led by the US and the UK, have sent billions of dollars worth of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine to help the country repel Russia’s unprovoked invasion, while imposing crippling sanctions on Putin and his cronies.
Belarus said in March its armed forces were not taking part in what Moscow calls its “special operation” in Ukraine, but it did serve as a launchpad for Russia to send thousands of troops across the border on Feb. 24.
Writing to Guterres, Lukashenko claimed that his people “have never been a threat to any of their neighbors,” and accused other nations of unfairly maligning Belarus, reported the Daily Beast.
“We are not aggressors, as some states try to present us,” he argued. “We are not traitors. “Honesty and integrity in relationships are important to us.”
Lukashenko and Putin have remained exceptionally close throughout the three-month conflict. During a televised meeting of the two allies in the Black Sear resort of Sochi on Monday, the Belarusian president defended his Russian counterpart, arguing that Putin was not to blame for the global economic chaos that has been unleased by the war.
“What is happening over there is that they really underestimated it by reading their own media,” Lukashenko said, referring to Western nations. “They got inflation yet the truth is ‘Putin is to blame,’ ‘Putin is to blame for everything.'”
In his letter to the UN chief, Lukashenko, who has ruled as a de facto dictator in Belarus since 1994, continued with that theme, painting Russia as the real victim.
“The reluctance of Western countries to work to strengthen unified and indivisible security, their disrespect for legitimate interests and ignoring the concerns of other partners, primarily Russia, resulted first in trade, economic and information wars, and then provoked a heated conflict on the territory of Ukraine,” he alleged.
Lukashenko urged the West to “refrain from arms supplies, from information warfare and provocations, from inflating hate speech in the media, from promoting racism and discrimination on the ground of national, cultural, linguistic and religious affiliation, from legalizing and sending mercenaries.”
