MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/. The West keeps trying to turn Belarus into a "new Ukraine," but the country successfully resists these attempts thanks to its historical and cultural ties with Russia, said Russian Ambassador to Belarus Boris Gryzlov.

"It is important not to deceive ourselves. The fact that Belarus has not turned into Ukraine does not mean there have not been attempts to turn Belarus into a new Ukraine," the chairman of the Supreme Council of the United Russia party said in an interview with the in-house magazine Pervichka.

Amid the tightening international environment, the centuries-old unity between Russia and Belarus becomes especially important, Gryzlov pointed out. This unity, he said, manifests itself not only in Russia-Belarus strategic political alliance, systemic integration and economic cooperation, but also in the two countries' common ethnic roots and affinity in their languages, history, and culture.

According to Gryzlov, Western propaganda aims to make Belarusian people believe that Russia is their hostile neighbor, to present integration with Russia as a colonization-like process, and to undermine the spiritual basis grounded in the ethnic and cultural kinship of the Eastern Slavs. "This is the very scenario implemented in Ukraine," he added.

Adversaries are hatching similar plans against the Union State of Russia and Belarus, which is a key integration project that forms the basis of the Eurasian partnership – a new center of power in a multipolar world, Gryzlov emphasized.

Creation of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, which celebrated its 25th anniversary at the end of 2024, was a natural process, it resulted from the historical mutual attraction of the two peoples, the Russian ambassador noted. "Our integration project has never served as a means to achieve unity, it was simply born out of it, which is why it has been successful," he concluded.