29 September 2006
Lukashenko: Belarusians will die for Russia

Aleksandr Lukashenko has called on Gazprom not to increase gas prices for Belarus next year, saying that the Belarusians would die for Russia if the West decided one day to attack it.

"If tanks start rolling from there to Russia, we will be dying here for Russia," he told a group of Russian reporters in Minsk on Friday. "And our people should be ready for this."

"Do you have a single military unit between Moscow and NATO's borders westward? You have only one, which is Belarusian," he stressed.

"We are ready to defend you. This is our policy," he noted.

The Belarusian leader complained that the Russian Armed Forces were reluctant to stage joint military exercises in Belarus, suggesting that Russia was fearing that the "West" would accuse it of turning into a military state. "We should communicate with each other on training grounds in order to be ready for signal support in the event of some emergency."

"We give food and drink to Russians that are kicked out of Lithuania as dogs if they fall in discharge there for some reason," he said. "The Chechens that were travelling to Poland via Brest were thrown out of the train cars. Hundreds of people were there. We received and accommodated them, gave them food and drink. They bore children there and named them after me," he said. //BelaPAN