MOSCOW, March 14. /TASS/. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko is convinced that there will be no war in Europe, which is feared in the West.
"Maybe they need it? And I will tell you that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, the Russian leadership is planning no war. There will be no war in five years," Lukashenko said in an interview for the 60 Minutes program on the Rossiya-1 TV channel.
"<...> We've had enough of this in [Ukraine]. <...> Why do we need this? It is them (the West - TASS) who need it to strain the situation," the Belarusian president said.
Also, Lukashenko believes, Europe is trying to justify itself to the people for the proposed military spending and rearming. "If [US President Donald] Trump leaves, NATO <...> will have to be created, you never know what will happen. But we need to explain to the people [spending of] 800 billion [euros]. This is why, we need this smoke screen in the media that we are going to attack," Lukashenko explained.
He said the leadership of Belarus would have known about the plans to attack Europe. "Listen, if we were going to, I would have known for sure, because the whole operation [would have gone through the border with Belarus] <...>. We have no such plans," Lukashenko said.
"Once I discussed the problem with the Europeans with Putin, when they started scaring us that they would close the Baltic Sea and Russia would not be able to trade in the Baltic. I said as a joke: "You know, Vladimir Vladimirovich, we will have to escort our dry cargo ships with military vessels." We joked, laughed, and that was it. That's the plan," the Belarusian president said.
"But it's quite realistic if they try to lock us up in violation of international rules. We're not trespassing on their territory. And we never planned any attack on Europe. They know this very well," the president of Belarus noted.