The Russian TV channel Dozhd showed an interview with the Belarusian President on the evening of May 21.
Lukashenka and Putin cannot be dictators as ‘there are no resources for dictatorship’, he claimed. Lukashenka confessed that he had joked once: “Thank God, Vladimir Vladimirovich, I am not the scariest person in Europe anymore.”
TV presenter Kseniya Sobchak noticed that people kept saying that the Russian President had started copying Lukashenka. “Putin has faced a situation when he has to follow your example and use the Belarusian experience,” she noted. Sobchak meant dispersals of opposition actions, repressions exercised on oppositionists and adoption of a number of laws.
"This is not true! There is only one way out in such situations,” Alyaksandr Lukashenka said. “Does it mean that you do not think that he is copying you?” Sobchak asked. “We are of the same kin, sometimes we can copy one another. It’s not really copying,” the Belarusian President replied.
