France asks Belarus to demand withdrawal of Russian troops

PARIS

French President Emmanuel Macron urged Belarus on Saturday to demand Russia withdraw troops from its soil immediately, according to a statement from his office.

Macron pressed President Aleksandr Lukashenko, in a telephone call, to make the request as quickly as possible because Russia is “waging a unilateral and unjust war,” said the Elysee statement.

The French president reminded Lukashenko of the deep brotherhood between the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples which should make “Belarus refuse to be Russia’s vassal and de facto accomplice in the war against Ukraine,” it said.

He emphasized the need for Minsk to cooperate with the international community to carry out relief operations and to help Ukrainians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin assured Macron that troops stationed in Belarus as part of a military drill would depart at the end of an exercise.

But since the launch of a Russian military operation earlier this week, Ukrainian authorities have claimed the country is facing an artillery attack and Russian troops are entering the country along its northern border with Belarus.

France threatened earlier to impose sanctions against Belarus for aiding Moscow’s military operations in Kyiv. The statement did not mention any reprisal against Minsk.

A readout of the call from Belarus’s side, detailed in the state-owned news agency, BELTA, made no mention of a “withdrawal of Russian troops.”

It said the two heads of state discussed the Russian-Ukraine conflict and Belarus’s role in Europe for more than an hour.

Regarding Minsk authorizing Russia to deploy nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil, raised by Macron, the BELTA report said Lukashenko noted it as “fake news.”

“If the Belarusian nation is not being strangled, then conventional weapons and nuclear weapons are out of the question,” he said.