'No one is driving anyone anywhere’. What Lukashenko said about Eurasian integration 14 years ago
"We are not losing any sovereignty, nobody is pushing anyone anywhere," - this is exactly how President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko commented on Eurasian integration in 2011. And already from January 1, 2012, the Single Economic Space of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan started operating. We will talk about this and other significant events of 2012 in the new issue of the BELTA YouTube project "How it was".
Alexander Lukashenko set a course for an alliance with Russia from the first days of his presidency. But the Belarusian leader paid no less attention to integration processes throughout the Eurasian space. Although not everyone was happy about it. Hillary Clinton, who held the post of US Secretary of State in 2012, even called the integration processes "re-Sovietization of the region." The West really did not want the former union republics to come closer.
The President expressed his opinion quite unequivocally and urged not to justify himself to anyone.
"Attempts are still being made to disrupt this process. It is clear who is behind these people, but we have overcome all this and clearly stated that we are not losing any sovereignty, nobody is pushing anyone anywhere," Alexander Lukashenko noted. - I think that Russia is unnecessarily justifying itself too much to everyone, that it is pressuring someone here. We are doing this because it is beneficial to all three states."