ASTANA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th October, 2022) Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko accused the West on Thursday of going all out to destabilize his country after it agreed to never acquire nuclear weapons.
"Belarus is one of the former Soviet republics that voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons. What did we get in return? Instead of genuine international legal guarantees, we got empty declarations, such as the Budapest Memorandum, and constant attempts to destabilize the situation," he said in Astana.
Lukashenko, who spoke at the Kazakhstan-initiated Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, said the West openly orchestrated anti-government protests in 2020 after trying out the scenario in Ukraine in 2014.
Belarus accused the United States, a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, of violating the pact by imposing economic sanctions on it in 2013. The 1994 memorandum promised that nuclear powers would not use economic coercion or military force against ex-Soviet countries if they signed up to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
