Lukashenko Says Ukraine Planned to Attack Belarus

"And if six hours before the operation there had not been a preventive strike on the positions - four positions, I will now show the map, I brought it - they would have attacked our troops of Belarus and Russia... we did not unleash this war, our conscience is clear. It's good that we started", Lukashenko said.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) hold talks in the Kremlin, Friday 18 February, 2022.

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"They were not only preparing to attack the Donbass, they lined up positions to strike at Belarus", Lukashenko added.

Commenting on the sanctions imposed on both Moscow and Minsk, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that the USSR had lived under sanctions but still succeeded.

"The USSR really lived under the conditions of sanctions, developed and achieved tremendous success ... Even after the 1990s, sanctions against Russia were maintained and then passed into new and modern times from the time of the Soviet Union," Putin said during his meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Russia and Belarus faced sanctions after Moscow launched a special military operation in Ukraine. The step was taken amid escalating attacks by Kiev's forces in Donbass, which prompted the mass evacuation of civilians and made the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics appeal to Russia for help. President Putin stressed that the op was started to stop the bloodshed in Donbass and aims to demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine.

Russian-Belarussian joint exercises in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region, March 2021.

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The Russian forces have been targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure with precision weapons: the MoD stated that a total of 3,213 Ukrainian military objects have been eliminated since the beginning of the operation.

The list of destroyed Ukrainian vehicles includes "98 aircraft, 118 unmanned aerial vehicles, 1,041 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 113 multiple launch rocket systems, 389 field artillery guns and mortars, as well as 843 units of special military vehicles", according to an official statement.