MINSK, May 7. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that he will be ready to call an early presidential election only if the Untied States does the same and on the same day.
"I am all for it. I’m saying this in public. I am all for the election they want. I will survive everything. We are independent and sovereign, but I’ll walk over it. I will be ready. In lockstep with the Americans. Let the Americans call early elections, and we will call an election in Belarus on the same day," the news agency BelTA quotes Lukashenko as saying.
He is certain, though, that the US authorities will never agree to an election do-over.
"We will do that immediately - on any day they call their early election. It must be fair," he stressed.
Lukashenko doubts it will be possible to vote by mail in Belarus, the way it was allowed in the United States.
"I find it hard to imagine that we would vote by mail. We would be instantly torn to pieces, if we tried. We would have no time to vote. They would not just wipe their feet with us, they would tear us to pieces and make mincemeat of us for doing that. But there it is possible. That’s not just double standards. It’s a real war, an attempt to strangle us, to annihilate us, so that we won’t ever raise our heads, because we refused to obey and because we refused to succumb to them," he said.
The Belarusian leader argues that during the 2020 election campaign in the US one of the candidates, then President Donald Trump, was denied the right to express his point of view on various platforms, particularly on his own Twitter account.
"They wiped their feet with an incumbent president. They still do not let him say a word on Twitter. They blocked him then. This is not exactly what one calls free access to the mass media," Lukashenko pointed out.