Lukashenko ready to invite Western observers to joint exercises with Russia
MINSK. April 7 - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he is ready to invite Western observers to the joint exercises with Russia 'West-2017' due in autumn.
"I stress once again that I am ready to invite these Democrats, so-called Congressmen to the exercises. Let them come and watch, let them see what our Belarusian-Russian grouping here is capable of," Lukashenko said in an interview with Mir TV channel.
"So that they would understand with whom they will have to deal, if God forbid, and let them understand that we don't intend to attack anyone, that we are exercising defense matters. We were absolutely definite on these matters in our talks with President Vladimir Putin on security," he said.
"For some reason many people focused on 'West-2017' exercises," he said. "But these are not the first exercises. We hold corresponding exercises in the framework of the Union State in turn because we have set up a unified grouping in this direction," Lukashenko said.
"It [the grouping] was established at my initiative. I warned then - the then leaders did not understand me much, the current leadership of Russia was quite reluctant at the early stages too but as Putin is a relatively military person after all I told them that we support armies anyway, we still have to train them and who can guarantee that everyone will be well in our Western direction in contacts with NATO," Lukashenko said.
He said that then Belarus and Russia agreed to hold the exercises alternately. "And a very long practice developed in this way to hold them every year. Why the sudden excitement now? Why did you get excited? Ordinary exercises the same as before," he said.
"I invited everyone to the exercises, everyone who wanted, including NATO representatives," Lukashenko said.