MINSK, March 1. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said he had asked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to keep some forces in Belarus after a joint exercise "for covering the Gomel direction."
"In the current situation, I asked the Russian president to keep part of the forces in the Gomel area. We have never had plans for going to war with Ukraine or suspected that we may be under threat from this direction. We had never stationed any army units there," Lukashenko said at a meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday, the BelTA news agency reports.
"Incidentally, when the exercise was over, the Russian forces were ready to leave for their permanent bases. Actually, some began to leave," Lukashenko said. "But the West needed an armed conflict that could be blamed on Russia. They did not confine themselves to media fakes or economic measures but alerted an 8,000-strong group for redeployment to Europe. Two thousand of them were on our border on February 20," Lukashenko said. "The beefing up of Ukraine’s military potential grew immeasurably, with US planes bringing in loads of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles and other ammunition every day. "Simultaneously, the Ukrainian army was stepping up the missile strikes against civilian facilities in Donbass with heavy weapons, killing innocent people."
The joint Russian-Belarusian exercise Union Resolve 2022 was held in Belarus on February 10-20.