Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has revealed that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko apologised to him for Belarus’s involvement in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a phone call shortly after the war began, and even suggested a target in his own country for Kyiv to strike in retaliation.
In an interview with American podcaster Lex Fridman that was published on Sunday, Zelensky recounted how he and Lukashenko held a phone call in the week following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, during which he said the Belarusian leader apologised for Russian missiles being fired into Ukraine from Belarusian territory.
“Missiles were launched from my territory and Putin was the one launching them”, Zelensky quoted Lukashenko as saying, adding that the Belarusian dictator had explained to him that he was “not in charge” of Russian missile strikes on Ukraine from Belarus.
Zelensky said that he responded to Lukashenko’s apology by calling him a “murderer”, to which the Belarusian dictator replied that Ukraine “can’t fight the Russians” and even suggesting that Kyiv retaliate by striking Belarus’s Mazyr Oil Refinery, a facility near the country’s border with Ukraine that primarily processes Russian crude oil.
In April, two years after his alleged phone call with Zelensky, Lukashenko took a very different approach to the threat of Ukrainian airstrikes against targets in Belarus, warning that Ukraine would face a “tenfold” response if it launched drone strikes on oil refineries, including the Mazyr plant.
Shortly before speaking about Lukashenko, Zelensky dismissed the West’s imposition of sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine as “complete bullshit”, telling Fridman that he had asked Western leaders to arm Ukraine and sanction Russia before the invasion began in an attempt to intimidate Putin and dissuade him from starting a war.
When asked by Fridman whether he would consider negotiations with Putin and US President-elect Donald Trump after the latter’s inauguration on 20 January, Zelensky said he would first seek to speak with Trump and “agree with him on how we can stop the war” before agreeing to negotiate directly with Russia.
Lukashenko’s spokesperson, Natalia Eismont, denied the story on Monday however, telling Russian business news outlet RBC on Monday that “no apology was made by the president of Belarus to Zelensky, for the simple reason that we have nothing to apologise for.”
While Eismont did confirm that the phone call had taken place, she stressed that it had come about solely due to what she described as “the emotional reaction” the Russian invasion of Ukraine inspired in Lukashenko’s youngest son Nikolay, who had Zelensky’s personal contacts saved in his phone.
Born in Tajikistan, Lex Fridman is an American computer scientist and AI researcher known primarily for his Lex Fridman Podcast, for which he interviews prominent figures from the worlds of science, technology and politics. While Fridman describes his podcast as “conversations about the nature of intelligence, consciousness, love, and power” and denies having any particular political leanings, he has been accused by critics of providing a platform to the “anti-woke tech elite”.