Lukashenko announced last week that Russia last week began implementing a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. The plan, the Kremlin’s first deployment of such nuclear warheads outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, has raised concerns in the West.
In an interview broadcast yesterday on Russian state television, Lukashenko, one of the staunchest allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said, “We must understand strategically” that Minsk and Moscow have a unique opportunity to unite.
“No one is against Kazakhstan and other countries that have the same close relations that we have with the Russian Federation,” Lukashenko said. “If anyone is interested…it’s very simple: join the Union State of Belarus and Russia. That’s it. There will be nuclear weapons for everyone.” He added that that was his opinion, not Russia’s.
Russia used the territory of Belarus to launch its invasion of Ukraine in February last year. Since then, their military cooperation has intensified, with joint exercises on Belarusian soil.
Kazakhstan rejects the offer
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, whose country has close historical ties to Moscow but has refused to recognize Russia’s annexation of parts of Ukraine, rejected Lukashenko’s call to join the union. “I appreciate his banter,” Tokayev’s office quoted him via Telegram as saying, adding that Kazakhstan was already a member of a broader Russia-led trade bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union. So no further integration was required.
Lukashenko rushed to the hospital
Lukashenko’s latest public appearance follows fresh speculation that the Belarusian president is suffering from ill health. Yesterday, opposition figure Valeriy Tsepkalo announced that Lukashenko was “taken to the hospital” after a meeting with Putin. Tsepkalo continues to uphold that claim today, warning that the Kremlin is trying to cover up the incident.
“According to our information, Lukashenko spent several days in the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow. It is known that the doctors forbade him to fly the plane. There is no information about how, when and whether he was delivered to Minsk, as the doctors signed the confidentiality document. (…) no We should be distracted by this temporary measure by Lukashenko, ”writes Tsepkalo Twitter.
