MINSK, June 29. /TASS/. The ultimate goal of external forces is regime change in Belarus, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said after a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk on Tuesday.
"Their [the external forces’] ultimate goal is to change the structure and power in Belarus. We have been witnessing this lately," the Belarusian state-run news agency BelTA quoted Patrushev as saying.
The Russian security chief said he had exchanged opinions and impressions with the Belarusian president on security issues. "Our assessments are not just close, they fully coincide. Beyond a doubt, we are uniting, and will be uniting our efforts, and will act jointly against these challenges and threats," he vowed.
Patrushev said it was necessary to "focus on the influence being exerted from outside". "I spoke about the issues of information security. And it is necessary to pay attention to non-governmental organizations and their activity. Though they say that they are independent, this is totally not the case," Patrushev pointed out. "It is necessary to see, where they get their funding from, and who they are accountable to, and how these funds are being spent," the Russian security chief said.
Both law-enforcement agencies and security services of each of the two countries should work in this area and exchange information, Patrushev emphasized. "And, of course, we count on the public, which also provides information to us. Then we understand the role they [non-governmental organizations] play, whom they are accountable to and the goals they seek to achieve," the secretary of Russia’s Security Council said.
As the press office of Russia’s Security Council reported, at their meeting in Minsk, Lukashenko and Patrushev "discussed the issues of global and regional stability and some issues of Russia-Belarus cooperation".