Opinions & Interviews

Lukashenko: No one will attack Belarus from outside

An archive photo

MINSK, 20 July (BelTA) – The ongoing electoral campaign resembles the attempts to foment tensions after the presidential election in Belarus in 2010, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko said as he inspected the 103rd Independent Guards Airborne Brigade in Vitebsk on 16 July. An excerpt of the video from the meeting with the military was shown on the ONT TV channel, BelTA has learned.

“If some of you have a short memory, let me remind you: we have already gone through it. Look back at the year 2010. It was the starting point of the attempts to bring us to knees. They introduced sanctions and put us under pressure. But it did not work. And then they decided to take advantage of the presidential election to bring us to heel by putting together this gang and directing them at the House of Government,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

“There were 400 aggressive gangsters and we could identify everyone of them. Plus another 400 who could get involved. The rest were onlookers. The majority of them were whippersnappers whom we gave back to their mothers against signature. They came and picked up their precious creatures,” Aleksandr Lukashenko recalled the events that happened ten years ago.

He noted that the ongoing situation bears some similarity with those developments. “This suggests that this option to overthrow the current government or foment tensions remains on the table,” the head of state said.

“General Ravkov [State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus Andrei Ravkov] was right when he said: no one will attack us from outside, the situation is different,” the Belarusian head of state said.

A reminder, Andrei Ravkov said at the meeting in Vitebsk that most often modern war and conflicts did not begin with outside interventions involving troops. "As a rule, they started in the street, in squares," he said.

“Don’t think about somebody’s saying that the army will be against the people, that they will shoot at the people,” the state secretary of the Security Council stressed. “Not only the Armed Forces, but also the police, internal troops, border guards, and other security agencies are focused on –and it is our objective - preventing the collapse of the state and bloodshed. If we let it happen, it will mean that we have lost the battle. And if it begins, it will be done in a secret way, in a discreet way - mass riots, and I am convinced that right now you can see it."

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