MINSK, December 3. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that the West is exerting pressure on Belarus with the aim of turning it into another Ukraine, but this will not happen.
"They are demanding Belarus should become another Ukraine, which they have described as a democratic and developed country. Two days ago they were given a clear answer. We will never become like Ukraine. Because we are Belarusians and we have our own vision of our prospects," Lukashenko said at a conference on the country’s socio-economic development, the news agency BelTA reports.
He expressed the certainty that among those present in the conference room and among the ordinary citizens who wished a normal life for themselves and for their children there was nobody eager to see Belarus become another Ukraine.
Lukashenko drew attention to the fact that Belarus had found itself in the very center of a global confrontation between the West and Russia. He said that in that struggle the participants were acting not in isolation - channels for talks kept working.
"Don’t you think that we just fight, that there are no contacts, that we do not see anything, that they are not telling us anything and that we do not respond. We have channels we use for communication," Lukashenko said.
He recalled that last year, during the presidential election the collective West tried to destabilize the situation in the country.
"Their expectations that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, their dream would have materialized in August last year. They would have created a sanitary cordon. They would have created a block with its border drawn near Smolensk. They failed," Lukashenko said.