MOSCOW, May 16. /TASS/. The West has been waging a full-fledged hybrid war against Belarus and Russia, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Monday.

"The unipolar world order is becoming a thing of the past, yet the collective West is waging an aggressive war to defend its positions," the Belarusian president said, addressing the opening of a CSTO summit. "It is using all means, including in our organization’s zone of responsibility - from threatening the use of NATO weapons along our western borders to waging a full-fledged hybrid war, primarily against Russia and Belarus," he said.

According to the Belarusian president, the current meeting of the CSTO leaders is being held in a difficult time of the repartition of the world when NATO "is aggressively building up its muscles," seeking to include neutral countries and acting under the you-are-either-with-us-or-against-us principle and "is hypocritically continuing to declare its defensive nature." "The Collective Security Treaty Organization’s really defensive and peaceful position stands in contrast against this backdrop," he stressed. "It is evident that not a single country is a threat to the North Atlantic bloc."

He noted that Belarus’ participation ion the Union with Russia and in the CSTO has sobered up its potential opponents in the West. "Otherwise, I am afraid a hot war might have been unleashed in Belarus. By the way, they tried to do it back in 2020," he added.