Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko continued his off-the-record discussion with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who called him and Russian President Vladimir Putin “two old people” who are “talking about something over there,” reacting to Lukashenko’s latest statement regarding Ukraine and Putin’s proposals.
According to Belarusian state news agency BelTA, Lukashenko made the remark on 30 September at a meeting with the heads of government delegations attending meetings of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council and the CIS Council of Heads of Government.
“You are generals in the economies of your countries. I am already a man… As my colleague, whom I considered my son, Volodya Zelensky, recently said here, we are ‘old’ here with Putin, somewhere out there ‘whispering in corners’ to the detriment of others. This is complete nonsense,” he said.
After hours-long talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko said on 26 September that he wanted to meet with Vladimir Zelensky and discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine, noting that “there is a good offer” from Putin. He did not specify what the offer was.
He also said that Zelensky should agree to the “favourable terms” given by Putin to US President Donald Trump during their meeting on 15 August in Alaska, otherwise Zelensky risks “losing all of Ukraine”. Lukashenko said he had listened with Putin to a report from the Russian General Staff on the advance of the army, which further “will be difficult to stop”.
President Vladimir Zelensky responded by saying that Alexander Lukashenko “lives in his own world.”
“It is difficult for me to react in any way to what Lukashenko says, frankly speaking. He lives in his world, he has built it so, isolated himself, and has been living in it for three decades….. Sometimes Putin visits him in this world. So they are talking about something there, two already old people. So it’s hard to comment on anything. Well, let people talk,” he said during a video-link to the Warsaw Security Forum.
According to media reports in Alaska, Putin offered to freeze the front line in Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions and return to Ukraine the captured territories in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions if Kiev handed over to Russia the Donbass territories under its control. Ukraine rejected this proposal as absolutely unacceptable.