West has ‘backstabbed’ Ukraine – Lukashenko

Promises of support given by the US and its allies to nations that used to be parts of the USSR are empty, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday, citing Ukraine as an example of trust being betrayed.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was promised arms and money to fight Russia, with Western leaders stating it would last “for as long as it takes” to prevail. The aid is now dwindling, proving that Kiev was misled by the West, Lukashenko noted, and leaving Ukraine “standing with its legs split off the road.”

He claimed he had warned Zelensky: “some turmoil will happen, or something else – and they (the US) will forget about you. And here you go.” The Belarusian leader was referring to the Middle East crisis and the dispute over domestic policies in the US derailing White House attempts to appropriate continued funding for Kiev in Congress. He added that Ukraine’s president is now “walking around hat in hand, poor man.”

“They backstabbed him, just like in Afghanistan,” Lukashenko said, predicting that Ukrainians “will be clinging to plane landing gear and falling” the way some Afghans did in 2020, when the US was pulling its troops out amid the takeover of Kabul by Taliban fighters.

The remarks were directed at the security chiefs and heads of intelligence agencies of members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a post-Soviet intragovernmental organization, who had gathered in the Belarusian capital for a meeting. The host was making a case for regional integration, arguing that historical, cultural and economic reasons dictate the need for cooperation.

The West seeks to undermine this unity, and those who are tempted by its promises will get burned, Lukashenko argued. He was specifically addressing Armenia, which has been considering the US and the EU as potential security providers in the wake of the latest crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh. The part of Azerbaijan existed for decades as a self-proclaimed entity called ‘Artsakh’ which was tacitly allied with Yerevan, but in September, Baku reclaimed full control over the territory.

Lukashenko urged Armenia not to hastily cut ties with its fellow members of the CIS, because rifts like that are hard to mend.

“Do not split away under any circumstances, don’t leave, because [the West] will fail you. And a dispossessed nation that gets into a hard spot, a dead-end, has but one way out. It’s given a rifle and told to go to war,” he said.

Armenia was represented in Minsk by Kristinne Grigoryan, its former human rights ombudsman who was appointed the head of the newly-created foreign intelligence service in October.