MINSK, August 17. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has never insisted that Minsk recognize Crimea or Abkhazia, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said.
"He has never insisted. I did not recognize Crimea, Abkhazia, other things, as I was reproached. Not because I had some special point of view there. <...> That would have changed nothing and gained nothing. We cooperated with Crimea and we are cooperating. <...> We did not hide it. It’s just that from a practical point of view there was no need for it," he said in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Diana Panchenko, which she posted to her YouTube channel.
Asked whether he had recently had disputes with Putin over the events around Ukraine, Lukashenko said that he and the Russian president were expressing different points of view in their discussions.
"If there is an issue, we discuss it. It's not that, as some so-called opposition activists in the West try to present it, Lukashenko is bossed around by Putin, doing what he says. Those who know me understand perfectly well that’s impossible. With my character, my approach. There were times when sparks flew between Putin and me so much that …" the Belarusian president said, before trailing off.
"There was this latest conversation [with Putin]. We touched on the situation [in Ukraine] again. And being in the state of annoyance - we had been sitting together for a long time when we last met in St. Petersburg, then went to Valaam and so on - he’s sitting there and saying, ‘It's bad that we have clashed, the two peoples. And you (Belarus - TASS) are also involved. Slavs!’ And he’s saying, so thoughtfully, <...> ‘Nobody thought to subjugate, enslave, deprive Ukraine of its independence. We did not need it. The one thing they had to do was to behave properly and not cause problems for us,’" Lukashenko said.
He added he had nothing to argue with that.