Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus to come to Russia to ask for $3 billion

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko is going to come to Russia to talk to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Lukashenko plans to discuss a possibility of a three-billion-dollar loan to Minsk, The Kommersant reports.

Negotiations may take place on February 22 or 25 in Sochi. The last time Putin and Lukashenko met there was on September 14, when agreements were reached to allocate a loan to Belarus worth $1.5 billion.  

The sources of the publication in the Russian government claim that now Minsk wants to get access to the rest of the funds that Moscow allocated for the construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant. It goes about more than $3 billion.

In 2011, Russia and Belarus reached an agreement to allocate a state loan worth $10 billion for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Belarus. As of September 2020, Belarus had used 4.5 billion of the amount.

Kremlin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that the meeting between Putin and Lukashenko had been confirmed.

Lukashenko: Belarus going through crucial moment in history

On February 11, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that Belarus was going through a turning point in its history, BelTA news agency reports.

"We are going through a very serious and critical period in the life of not only our state, but of the entire Belarusian nation. There were few such moments in the history of our country," Lukashenko said.

He compared the current situation with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its aftermath.

"The only difference is that then there was complete hopelessness. There was no country, there was nothing at all. A turning point, chaos in people's minds," Lukashenko added.

According to him, now Belarus has come across a severe attack from the outside. External forces wanted to "try their methods and techniques not on the example of the destroyed and fallen country, where there is complete discord in people's heads, but in a monolithic and seemingly normal republic," he said.

"If it works out, it means that they can proceed. It was a tests for them, it was a springboard for an attack on Russia," Lukashenko said.

Belarus held its presidential election on August 9. The CEC said Lukashenko, who has ruled the country since 1994, won 80 percent of the vote. This caused massive protests in Belarus that have been going on for six months now. Lukashenko assures that the protests were instigated by Western forces.