MINSK, March 24./TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko believes that Poland’s offer to send a contingent of Western peacekeepers to Ukraine could pose a serious risk of a third world war.

"You see that these Poles have already flipped their lids, they’ve now put forward their offer and they’ve invited that guy from overseas (US President Joe Biden - TASS) and are spoon-feeding him [this offer] ‘let’s create a peacekeeping force of about 100,000 and bring it into Ukraine via Lvov,’" Lukashenko was quoted by BelTA news agency as telling the meeting. "Do you realize that this means a third world war? Or what? Do you think that we will be standing on the sidelines like some prim and proper goody-two-shoes?" he argued.

The situation is very serious and tense, the Belarusian leader stressed. "They will simply trample on us, we won’t even have time to make a peep," he went on to say. "If you want to have a country, you’ve got to hold on to it tooth and nail. Better without a machine gun, since the situation is very serious and very tense, we must see and grasp this," he stressed.

Earlier, Warsaw laid out the proposal for a NATO peacekeeping mission to the western regions of Ukraine.