MINSK, February 20. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko says the West is making a boatload of money off the conflict in Ukraine, so it has no incentive to "stop the slaughter."

"Those benefiting from the war have no interest in stopping the slaughter in a country that is alien to them. The stakes are too high and the profits too fabulous. For example, the price of a NATO 155 mm artillery shell has quadrupled since the beginning of the war in Ukraine - from 2,000 to 8,000 euros," the BelTA news agency quoted the president as saying.

"I would like to characterize the peculiarity of the current phase of the civilizational confrontation between the East and the West as follows: the masks have completely fallen off," Lukashenko said. The president pointed out that previously, in order to satisfy its geopolitical ambitions Washington at least invented a valid pretext, using "soft and smart power, inspired color revolutions, hybrid and proxy wars, but today it is moving to open aggression and physically destroying undesirables without any pretenses."

According to him, today the prevailing notion is that the multipolar world is "a world of uncontrolled growth of agents of chaos, so we need a global police [state]." Lukashenko emphasized that only a multipolar world can create balance and ensure security on all continents. "The transition to it is very stressful and dramatic. And it cannot be otherwise," he said.