“It all depends on the United States and Britain,” Lukashenko said in an interview with the American network “NBC News”, from which the official agency published excerpts.
“If you realize the need tomorrow to sit at the negotiating table and find a solution, believe me, we will find a solution within a week,” the Russian-allied president added.
Lukashenko’s statement comes amid contradictory signals about the course of the war that has erupted since February 24.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has used new diplomatic language towards Ukrainians in recent days, saying at a press conference in the Kazakh capital Astana two days ago: “Our mission is not to destroy Ukraine.”
He added in a television interview that Russia had “great respect” for the Ukrainian people, despite what he called “the current situation.”
From these signs, it seemed that there was a tendency towards a shift, albeit limited, in the course of the war that erupted eight months ago.
On the other hand, there were signs of escalation that included even Belarus, Ukraine’s neighbor and allied with Russia.
After, in early October, the Kerch bridge linking the Russian mainland with the Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014, was subjected to an attack that partially destroyed it, Russia launched missile strikes over the course of days across Ukraine, in which it seemed as if the clock had turned back, specifically to the beginning the war.
In addition, Russia annexed 4 regions of Ukraine to it, after referendums were held in them, as well as Moscow’s threat to use nuclear weapons to defend its interests.
And Saturday, Belarus announced that the first Russian soldiers in the new joint military force between Moscow and Minsk, arrived in the country.
The move came a week after the announcement of the formation of the force that is supposed to defend the country’s borders against a Ukrainian threat.
But Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, earlier accused Moscow of trying to “drag Belarus into war”.
He called on the Group of Seven to send an international monitoring mission on the border between Ukraine and Belarus.
#Russias #ally #solution #Ukraine #crisis #week #depends #countries