MINSK, December 2. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko believes that the current Western pressure on his country fits in with the general context of struggle against Russia.
"They [the West] behave disgustingly and infamously. We can see this in Belarus. Last year they failed to strangle Belarus instantly. Now they have begun gradual strangulation. It is clear that this fits in with the general context of struggle against Russia and the friends of Russia and Belarus," Lukashenko said at a meeting with Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin on Thursday, the Belarusian news agency BelTA reports.
Lukashenko promised that Minsk’s stance was very resolute in this respect.
"We are obliged to stand firm. We are obliged to develop properly and to move forward, showing that we will be able to do without them. We have everything necessary for this. I am certain that this is a common position of the State Duma and you as its Speaker," he told Volodin.
Lukashenko pointed out that there was no reason to worry about Belarus too much.
"We manage to carry on," he said. In Russia, he went on, some say that the Belarusians in this global confrontation stay firm like the Brest Fortress in its day.
"A good example. But we will not have to be a Brest Fortress any more. Nobody is going to besiege us. But if some people do not understand us, we will try to explain to them, which we have been doing together with the Russians," he said.
He emphasized the need for preserving the civilization that still existed in the space of Russia and Belarus.
"May some in the West go on yelling about the goals that we seek, but this is really so," Lukashenko said. He explained that he understood the common civilization space as the territory of the two counties where people of many nationalities coexist in peace.
"This is the essence of our civilization. We have never oppressed anybody, we do not oppress anybody and we are not going to do so, in contrast to them," he stressed. Lukashenko believes that Ukraine should be within this space, too.