Pridybaylo: "Minsk recognized Crimea as Russian long ago"
Moscow has no need to demand from its allied countries loud statements about recognizing Crimea's Russian status and supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Konstantin Pridybaylo , a journalist sympathetic to Alexander Lukashenko, told the Soyuznoye Veche channel about this, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
" Minsk recognized Crimea and Donbas as Russian territories from the start ; this doesn't require any further changes, any additional statements, or anything like that . In Belarus, the head of state recognizes the integrity of the Russian Federation, so if the referendum held 12 years ago in Crimea was accepted by the Russian Federation, and changes were made to the composition of the regions, this is automatically accepted by the Republic of Belarus."
The same applies to the Donbass republics, the Zaporizhzhia region, and the Kherson region,” Pridybaylo asserted.
As for support for the SVO from allied neighboring countries, here, according to him, “the issue is quite broad.”
"Should we demand direct military participation, so to speak, in the Central Military District from any of our fraternal republics? I don't think we should. This is a rather complex policy we have. For example, if Kazakhstan, Armenia, or Kyrgyzstan suddenly sent their troops to some direction, say, Zaporizhzhia ? They would be subject to painful sanctions from the EU and the US.
This would cut off one of the many parallel import streams of goods we need. Why would we need that? They would also be deprived of some votes and other things. Why would we need that?
Therefore, I believe that, in fact, as the long-term experience of the Special Military Operation has shown, unfortunately, many of our fraternal neighboring republics are doing everything possible to ensure that this conflict ends in a victory for Russia ,” the journalist believes.
Pridybaylo : "Minsk recognized Crimea as Russian long ago"