Lukashenko: I am sure we will never have to use nuclear weapons, but we must have them

I am sure we will never have to use nuclear weapons, but we must have them, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said at a solemn meeting to mark Belarus' Independence Day in Minsk on 30 June, BelTA has learned.

"I once told you at a large forum: if you don't know what to do in a given situation, and your enemies go out of their way to persuade you of something, do the opposite. If they make a push against nuclear weapons, do the opposite," Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

The president recalled how the Belarusian opposition, self-exiled today, striving for power yesterday, would say: "When we come to power, we will shut down the Belarusian nuclear power plant, we do not need it."

"Why did they say that? Because they were told so from abroad, above all, by our neighbors - Poland, Lithuania. What are they saying today? Lithuania has plans to build a new nuclear power plant, instead of the one they shut down. Poland plans to build two or three. Why did they advise our fools against building it? Why did they suggest closing it down. No one needs competitors. Those who do not use breakthrough, modern, ultra-modern technologies are a decaying and dying state," the president said.

"Nuclear power is a state-of-the-art technology. At a time when natural gas prices jumped to $2,000 per cubic meter, we paid $120. They paid $2,000, we - $120. When, they gave up on Russian cheap gas and oil, they began to say that nuclear energy is green energy, that it is the safest and needs to be developed.

Germany quietly postponed the closure of what they planned to close. France (they know how to build nuclear power plants, there are only 5 or 6 countries in the world that can do it) began to build new plants. All over the world, by the way. Just like Americans, Japanese, Koreans and others. I'm just taking you back to the recent past that you witnessed. If we curtailed the NPP project we would buy 5 to 6 billion cubic meters of natural gas more. It may be cheap today, but once it was expensive and it will rise in price in the future. Nuclear is the cheapest, safest energy. But the main thing is that we need it," the Belarusian leader said.

"This is exactly what they say about nuclear weapons that have been delivered to the Republic of Belarus. There is no need to criticize anyone; I have already spoken about this. It was my initiative; I insisted on this. The longer we live, the more we are convinced that we must have them here, in a safe place. I am sure that we will never have to use them and that the enemy will never set foot on our land as long as we have them," Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed.