Lukashenko said that Yeltsin put pressure on him to withdraw nuclear weapons from Belarus The United States and the first president of Russia Boris Yeltsin so that Minsk would transfer its nuclear weapons to Moscow. The head of state spoke about this in an interview with RIA Novosti.
The Belarusian leader noted that the document, according to which Belarus pledged to withdraw nuclear warheads from the country, was drawn up not by him, but by the previous leadership of the republic. He assured that he would not have taken such a step on his own. “After that, I haven't withdrawn nuclear weapons from Belarus for several years. Do you know why I brought him out? In violation of the agreement, I left him in Belarus. Believe it or not, not only at the request of the Americans. But, first of all, under the tough pressure from Yeltsin and the entire team that was then, ”Lukashenko explained.
As the agency explains, after the collapse of the USSR, dozens of charges for the Topol intercontinental missiles and over a thousand tactical nuclear warheads were located on the territory of Belarus. Minsk signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and was forced to withdraw weapons from the country.
On November 30, Lukashenko announced that he would offer Russian President Vladimir Putin to return nuclear weapons to Belarus on one condition – if NATO would deploy similar weapons on the territory Poland.
In 2010, the head of the republic has already expressed regret at ridding the country of nuclear weapons. Then Lukashenko called the decision made a mistake and stressed that if Belarus possessed such weapons, they would have “talked differently.”
At the same time, in 1996, Lukashenko expressed the opposite opinion. At a meeting with Yeltsin in the Kremlin, where they discussed closer cooperation between Moscow and Minsk, the Belarusian president spoke of the impossibility of stopping the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the country. Then the politician argued that there was no need to leave nuclear warheads in Belarus, because Minsk does not control them.