Russia, Belarus to sign landmark security pact, Russian news agency says
Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, will sign a landmark security pact on Friday that reflects global geopolitical changes, Russian state news agency RIA said on Tuesday.
The agreement will be among the documents the leaders are set to sign in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on the 25th anniversary of the Union State, a borderless union and alliance between the two former Soviet republics and neighbours.
"We are covering the topics of state, public, economic security, talking about ensuring stability in the development of our economies," the agency quoted Belarusian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Nazaruk as saying.
"It is designed to take into account the changed external conditions, when the world is moving to a polycentric world order," he added, describing what he called a "landmark" agreement.
The agency gave no further details of the pact.
As president, Lukashenko has kept Belarus in a firm authoritative grip for the past three decades, and been a loyal ally of Putin, allowing his territory to be used as a launch pad for Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
A flurry of military activity and joint air force drills between Russia and Belarus followed the invasion, rekindling concerns that Minsk could be preparing for a more active role in the conflict.
The 70-year-old Lukashenko, who calls himself the "last dictator in Europe", is not expected to lose a presidential vote in January.
He has said he would only order his troops to fight alongside Russia if another country launched an attack on Belarus.
Putin casts conflict in Ukraine as part of an existential battle with a declining and decadent West which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by encroaching on what he considers Moscow's sphere of influence.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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