(Reuters) -Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said after meeting Vladimir Putin on Friday that the Russian leader would announce a “very good proposal” for ending the war in Ukraine that he said was broadly backed by the United States.
Lukashenko, who met Putin in Moscow for more than five hours, did not say what the proposal entailed but added that it had been outlined to U.S. President Donald Trump when he held a summit with Putin in Alaska last month.
“President Putin and I discussed it, but I won’t talk about it. The president himself will say,” said Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin.
LUKASHENKO SAYS PROPOSAL IS GOOD FOR UKRAINE
“It’s a good proposal for Ukraine, proposals that were heard by Donald Trump in Alaska, among other places, and taken to Washington for consideration and discussion. A very good proposal,” Lukashenko told Russian TV reporter Pavel Zarubin.
“If the Ukrainians don’t accept these proposals, it will be like it was at the beginning of the special military operation,” he added, using Moscow’s term for the invasion of Ukraine. “It will be even worse; they will lose Ukraine.”
Russia has previously insisted on terms that Ukraine rejects as tantamount to surrender, including the handover of more territory, the renunciation of Kyiv’s NATO membership ambitions and the imposition of limits on the size of its armed forces.
Lukashenko was speaking three days after Trump, in an unexpected shift, said Ukraine was capable of regaining all its lost territory – amounting to nearly a fifth of the country – and should act now because Russia’s economy was in deep trouble.
The Kremlin rejected those comments, attributing them to the fact that Trump had just met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and saying he had been influenced by Zelenskiy’s view of the conflict. Zelenskiy has said that Putin is pretending to negotiate but has no real interest in peace.
“To avoid losing all of Ukraine, (Zelenskiy) must not just negotiate, but agree to favorable terms — terms that, by and large, have been approved by the Americans,” Lukashenko said.
He also suggested that he, Putin and Zelenskiy, as leaders of three Slavic states, should sit down and come to an agreement.
Ukraine says it wants a meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin, but Russia has said this can only happen if the Ukrainian leader agrees to come to Moscow.
LUKASHENKO ISOLATED, BUT TRUMP PHONED HIM
Lukashenko meets Putin more often than any other foreign leader and has backed his war in Ukraine, although without committing his own troops to fight.
He has been isolated for years by Western sanctions over his war role and human rights record. But Trump in recent weeks has phoned him, praised him as a “highly respected” leader and sent an envoy to Belarus for talks that led to the freeing of more than 50 political prisoners.
U.S. officials say the Trump administration hopes to draw Belarus out of Moscow’s geopolitical orbit, even if only to a degree. But some political analysts see this as unlikely, given Lukashenko’s heavy dependence – politically, economically and militarily – on his much larger neighbour.
Underlining the closeness of the relationship, Belarus and Russia held joint military exercises this month. On Friday Lukashenko proposed building a nuclear power station in eastern Belarus that could provide electricity to Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine.
(Additional reporting by Gram Slattery in Washington, Writing by Mark Trevelyan, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Comments