The Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko implicitly acknowledged during a youth forum held on Wednesday in Minsk that if the West had succeeded in overthrowing him in 2020, Russia would have invaded Belarus in the same way it invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The statement, reported by the Belarusian state agency BelTA and shared in a 36-second video, was delivered to young people gathered for National Unity Day.
«They tried to tear us away live from Russia: that’s what they attempted in 2020. And if they had succeeded, we would have what is happening now in Ukraine, a rich, powerful, and strong country. They tested you and me. It didn't work out for them,» the leader stated.
The statement is not explicit: Lukashenko does not say that Russia would have invaded Belarus, but that his country's fate would have been "what is happening now in Ukraine." The inference, however, is direct: if he had yielded to the protests and Belarus had moved away from Moscow, the Kremlin would have responded with the same logic it applied against Kyiv.
The backdrop is the political crisis of August 2020, when the Belarusian presidential elections sparked massive protests demanding Lukashenko's resignation.
The opposition, led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, denounced electoral fraud and called for new free elections. Russia supported the dictator and the protests were crushed.
Two years later, Moscow justified its invasion of Ukraine—initiated on February 24, 2022—with claims of "demilitarization" and blocking Kiev's accession to NATO. The international community rejected these pretexts; analysts point out that the real cause was Russia's rejection of Ukraine's western orientation and the desire to restore its influence over the country.
What makes Lukashenko's statement unique is that by pronouncing it, he is admitting something that the Kremlin has never stated out loud: that the loyalty of a government to Moscow is a condition for not being invaded.
The Belarusian dictator —in power since 1994 and having begun his seventh term in March 2025— added that the American representatives he is in dialogue with "never told me" directly that they wanted to distance Belarus from Russia, although he understood that implicit goal. "But I have to acknowledge the American delegation that they never said it to me," he remarked.
The statement arrives at a paradoxical moment. A day before the speech, Belarus released 25 political prisoners as part of negotiations with the U.S. envoy John Coale, in exchange for relief from sanctions. Since March 2026, the regime has released more than 400 political prisoners in total within that process.
This double game —publicly denouncing Western intentions to its domestic audience while privately negotiating with Washington— defines the strategy of the longest-serving dictator in Europe.
Analysts describe their stance as «tactical distancing, not strategic independence»: Lukashenko seeks to broaden his diplomatic margin without breaking away from Moscow, from which he continues to depend for his political survival.
Lukashenko himself summarized that dependency with a phrase that serves as a warning for both the West and his own people: "The Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China are two countries that are outside of the parentheses; they are not up for discussion."
Filed under: