Lukashenka: They strangle us with sanctions, NATO flies around borders

Making a speech on the event of the Victory Day, the dictator spoke on close cooperation with Russia.

Lukashenka claims that Belarusian-Russian military cooperation, including the deployment of new air defense systems and fighter planes, is of a defensive nature.

“Considering new challenges and threats to our security, we aim at strengthening the air defense system in order to ensure the integrity of the state borders and the country’s sovereignty. New systems and planes are exclusively defensive weapons”, - Lukashenka stated in Minsk on Thursday at a Victory Day parade.

“We will have as many of them as the security of our state requires”, - the Belarusian ruler said.

He emphasized that “the military doctrines of Belarus and Russia do not accept the perspectives of a war: we do not need the lands of others, but we will cherish ours as the apple of our eye”.

“We will do everything possible for the protection of the borders of the union state and the consolidation of the brotherhood in arms”,- he stated.

Lukashenka noted that the Belarusian state “forms the military doctrine exclusively coming from the principles of defense sufficiency and strategic containment of potential aggression”.

“We fully follow the obligations in the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The main direction of our cooperation in the military domain is the partnership with brotherly Russia”, - he claimed.

Lukashenka explained that “sovereign Belarus is constantly in the gun sight of the weapons of the non-proclaimed cold war”. In his words, “someone in the West failed to cope with the fact that Belarus has not become another banana republic, dancing to the pipe of the oversees democracy – they strangle us with sanctions, pour the mud of slander on us, military NATO plane fly along our borders, new military based are being deployed, provocations are being made”.

“But no one will make our people turn off the chosen way”, - the dictator concluded.