Alexander Lukashenko Believes Russia Should Have Launched Special Military Operation in Ukraine
Jose Nino
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On June 1, 2023 Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko declared that the Russo-Ukrainian conflict was a process that was many years in the making. He believes that the only mistake Belarus and Russia made was not solving this problem sooner.
Lukashenko spoke before a meeting of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) security leaders, where he proclaimed that the Russo-Ukrainian conflict started prior to the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which saw the overthrow of democratically-elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.
“I absolutely agree with President [Vladimir] Putin when he says that we did not start this war. It didn’t even start in 2014. It started well before 2014. We saw everything that happened here: the ‘brown’ coup that took place, and what Ukraine has been led into,” Lukashenko asserted.
The Belarusian leader said that hostilities between Russia and NATO were inevitable. He added that even if Russia had not kicked off its military incursion in 2022 , it would have happened in some shape or form. However, it would have occurred on worse terms for Belarus and Russia.
Lukashenko asserted that the “only mistake” made by the two countries was their use of continued efforts to solve this conflict through diplomacy as opposed to launching military action sooner.
Per Lukashenko, current Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, in addition to his predecessors such as Petro Poroshenko and Yanukovich, effectively did little to secure a “peaceful existence” for Ukrainians citizens. Lukashenko claimed that these Ukrainian leaders “didn’t want war” but were seemingly pushed into it. He also called attention to how Ukraine’s Western sponsors have openly admitted to using diplomatic efforts as a smokescreen to buy time for Ukraine to re-arm and re-constitute itself since 2014.
“They frankly admitted that they did everything to prepare Ukraine for a war with Russia,” Lukashenko asserted, making references to comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-French President Francois Hollande. Both leaders have claimed that the Minsk agreements, which were signed in 2014 and 2015 as a supposed roadmap for peace in the Donbass, were a diplomatic ruse to buy time for Ukraine to build up its forces.
This entire geopolitical tragedy could have been prevented had there been a more responsible political class in charge of the Collective West. Sadly, many of these elites were wedded to the idea of NATO expansion and did not respect Russia’s great power interests.
If the West doesn’t wake up to these realities, we are destined to sleepwalk into a geopolitical disaster of epic proportions.
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