Lukashenko asks Russia for agreement to defend Belarus if attacked

On April 10th, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko asked Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for security assurance from Moscow and a promise that the Kremlin would defend Belarus in the event the country was attacked. 

First reported on by Belarusian state-owned media, Lukashenko was cited as saying he had previously discussed the topic of defense with Vladimir Putin and noted that it was necessary to formalize some security guarantees according to a Reuters report. 

"I raised this question in the negotiations with the President of Russia. He completely supported me,” Lukashenko explained, according to a translation from Ukrainska Pravda. 

"He said we need to revise all our decrees and agreements—between Belarus and Russia—to see what international normative legal act we must sign now in order to ensure the full security of Belarus,” Lukashenko added. 

According to Lukashenko, during his conversation with Putin, the two came to the conclusion that Belarus needed security guarantees from Russia that it would protect Belarus as if it was its own territory in the event the country was attacked. 

“This is the kind of security guarantees we need," Lukashenko explained, though it was not clear what kind of attack the Belarusian President was worried about. 

Lukashenko also thanked Shoigu and Russia for the thousands of troops that are currently stationed in Belarus, which hosted Russian soldiers over the last year and continues to do so.

“Belarus currently hosts a contingent of Russian forces, and also served as a staging ground for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in the early days of the war,” wrote DW News. 

During his meeting with Shoigu, Lukashenko again reiterated that he had no intention of sending Belarusian troops to fight in Russia’s war with Ukraine, but did add that if his country was attacked he would respond according to DW News. 

The Head of Ukraine’s Office of the President Mykhailo Podolyak called Lukashenko’s remarks “weird desires that require no longer political analysis” in a tweet after the details of the meeting were reported. 

"Hard to imagine an antelope asking for security guarantees in the crocodile's mouth,” Podolyak wrote, in a sarcastically charged message to his audience. 

“The only existential threat to [Belarus] is [Russia] openly declaring the country's absorption & endangering [the Belarusian] people with nuclear antics, " Podolyak added. 

According to an analysis from Ukrainska Pravda, Lukashenko’s desire to seek a deeper security partnership with Russia stems from his perceived notion that Western nations violated their promises to guarantee the security of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. 

In 1994, the United States along with France, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom guaranteed the safety of the three post-Soviet states in exchange for giving up their nuclear weapons at the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.

Photo by William J. Clinton Presidential Library Wiki Commons

"What security guarantees can the US even provide us with? None. What they do is initiate aggression against us, as we can see now,” Lukashenko said during his meeting with Shoigu. “We need full security guarantees from our brotherly Russia.”

Vladimir Putin recently announced plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, which may be why Lukashenko is seeking to deepen his security relationship with Russia as the two states move closer toward political integration.