Chairman of the State Border Guard Committee of Belarus (the government body that manages the international borders), Anatoly Lapusaid today (Sunday) in an interview with local media that if Ukraine carries out a “provocation” against soldiers of the border guard service – Minsk will respond accordingly.
“As soon as there is any kind of provocation – there will be an appropriate response. We are peace-loving people, but we will not allow ourselves to be hurt. They also understand that if they come to us, they will receive an appropriate blow,” Lapo told a Belarusian TV channel and claimed that “in the entire history of modern Belarus, never We didn’t guard the border. Of course, we rebuilt the border guard, moved reserves there.”
He also referred to the neighboring countries of Belarus and claimed: “On the western borders (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia) the situation is more or less calm. Poland brought to the border thousands of soldiers deployed along the border. Regarding the Baltic countries, the situation is similar: they build barriers along the border, we We don’t understand why. We will focus all our efforts on protecting the border. We will only act on the basis of our national interests.”
Earlier, the Belarusian authorities announced a tense situation in the Ukrainian-Belarusian border area, and claimed that a large group of soldiers was stationed in the Ukrainian border area. Lapu said that “armed groups of people who have neither insignia nor uniforms are approaching the border of Belarus on the territory of Ukraine.” According to the reports, alertness on the Belarusian side was raised and reinforcements were announced at the border.
The Minister of Defense of Belarus said last week that his army “is ready at any moment to defend the country. The events taking place today throughout our country show that the forces must be ready to defend the constitutional order and territorial integrity of their country at any moment. Our main task is to do this on time and with high quality,” he said The minister noted that the supreme commander of the armed forces was assigned the task of preventing war on the territory of the country.
Even earlier, the president of Belarus said Lukashenko that a war between Kyiv and Minsk is “crazy from a military point of view” and claimed that the West is pushing for it. He also stated that he agreed with Putin on the deployment of a joint military force in the country.