MINSK, May 18. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday that he saw NATO's actions as potentially leading to a global conflict.

"After Finland's recent accession to the alliance and Sweden's forthcoming accession, we have once again witnessed an expansion of the North Atlantic bloc. Such actions are putting the world on the very dangerous brink of a global conflict," BelTA news agency quoted Lukashenko as telling a meeting with participants in a session of the Council of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly on Thursday.

The negative trends, mentioned repeatedly last year, are becoming a foreign policy reality, the Belarusian leader stressed. According to him, NATO’s military presence and offensive potential is growing along the western borders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Large-scale exercises are held and the military infrastructure is being updated at an accelerated pace, including in adjacent countries. "Certain countries have been turned into firing ranges for destroying old and testing new Western weapons," the Belarusian president noted.