October 25, Pozirk. Some forces in Russia would like to annex Belarus, but “this is impossible,” Alaksandar Łukašenka has told Russia’s Izvestiya.
“I am even afraid to say that this is [would lead to] war,” the Belarusian ruler said. “You see our relations with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. A lot of negotiations, personal and other contacts. We’ve never had this issue raised before. Well, in Russia, some people in high circles have a problem with it.”
“We can build relations that will be closer and stronger than in a unitary state, and no one will have grudges against anyone. We need it,” Łukašenka noted.
Putin had actually raised the question of Belarus annexation in 2002. Putin, Russia’s prime minister at the time, rejected the Belarusian ruler’s request for economic concessions and invited Belarus to join Russia as six provinces instead.
“We need to understand what we want and what our partners want. Flies are separate and cutlets are separate,” Putin said.
“Even [Vladimir] Lenin and [Josef] Stalin did not think of breaking up Belarus into pieces to incorporate it in the RSFSR or USSR,” Łukašenka said after that meeting.
He was so angry that he described Russian leaders as “brazen people without conscience,” recalled Mariusz Maszkiewicz, a former Polish ambassador who met with the Belarusian strongman shortly after that unsuccessful visit to Moscow.
Belarus and Russia established a union state in the 1990s. Integration intensified in 2020 after Moscow backed Łukašenka during the postelection political crisis in Belarus and in 2022, when the Belarusian leader supported Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Belarusian-Russian cooperation in political, defense and economic sectors has intensified amid Western sanctions targeting both countries.
