"People are talking today about the nuclear weapons that have been transferred to Belarus. There's no need to criticize anyone, I've talked about it before. It was my strongest initiative. And the longer we live, the more confident we are that they must be placed here, in Belarus, in a safe place," Lukashenko was quoted as saying by the state-run Belta news agency.
"I'm sure that as long as they are here, we will never have to use them, and no enemy soldier will ever set foot on our land."
The president added he has always believed that one should do the opposite of what the enemies want. He noted the Belarusian opposition had intended to shut down the Astravets Nuclear Power Plant after taking power.
"And why did they say that? Because they were instructed [to do so] by them [the Western countries], first of all by our Polish and Lithuanian neighbors. And what are they [Western countries] saying now? Lithuania is planning to build a new nuclear power plant to replace the one that was destroyed. Poland wants to build two or three," Lukashenko was quoted as saying by the outlet.
"So why did they tell our fools: don't build, you have to destroy? Well, nobody likes competition. The state that does not use advanced, high-end, breakthrough technologies today is a decaying, dying state."
Today, the Belarusian opposition says the same thing about nuclear weapons, Lukashenko added.