REUTERS

President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus believes that creating a Union State with Russia is no longer an option.

"First of all, Belarusians themselves wouldn't accept this" Lukashenko said in an interview with Ukraine's Dmitry Gordon, seen by RBC-Ukraine.

Lukashenko said the corresponding union of the two countries would be "impossible".

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"Even if I agreed to unification on the most favorable terms for Belarus, Belarusians would no longer accept this. The people are not ready for this, and they never will be... The nation is overripe. This would have been possible 20 or 25 years ago, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Now it's not," the president said.

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Lukashenko separately commented on reports about the alleged proposal to head the parliament of the Union State.

"I would never agree to this. I'm not some warehouse chief," the head of Belarus added.

As reported earlier, Lukashenko had already announced the impossibility of Belarus acceding to the Russian Federation.

In November 2019, Belarusian Ambassador to Russia claimed that Alexander Lukashenko and Russia's Vladimir Putin had agreed to create a single parliament and government within the framework of the idea to merge the two countries into a Union State.

Background

Putin's hybrid mix of Tsarist and Soviet Russian nationalism led to the establishment in 2007 of the Russkiy Mir Foundation ('Russian World Foundation"), followed by the emergence of a "Russian World" doctrine calling on the Russian government to intervene on behalf of Russians throughout the former Soviet bloc, Taras Kuzio wrote in an op-ed for the Atlantic Council.

"Although the term is subject to different interpretations, the "Russian World' concept broadly aims to unite the three modern eastern Slavic nations (Russia, Belarus and Ukraine) under Moscow's leadership, with the population of this informal empire bound together by the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church. This mirrors Soviet and Tsarist historical narratives which depicted Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians as fraternal nations born together in the medieval Kyiv Rus and destined to remain united," Kuzio wrote.

Throughout his time in power, Putin has consistently promoted Russia's ancient ties to the Kyiv Rus state as a way of furthering eastern Slavic unity.