Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday that he will run for a seventh term in the presidential elections to be held in 2025.
“I will run for office. Tell them that,” Lukashenko said, referring to the Belarusian opposition, to journalists at a polling station in the capital Minsk, according to the state news agency Belta.
Lukashenko voted in the parliamentary and local elections held yesterday in Belarus.
“No person, a responsible president, will abandon his people who followed him into the fight, and that is very important to me,” Lukashenko added.
Presidential elections are scheduled in Belarus for next year, the date of which has not yet been announced.
Lukashenko also touched on the suspension of Armenia in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), stating that the alliance will not fall apart because of it.
“We react to this decision absolutely calmly. If they don’t want to be in the CSTO, it won’t collapse, it won’t be destroyed,” Lukashenko pointed out.
Noting that there has been no official notification of Armenia on this yet, Lukashenko asked the Armenian side not to rush to make sudden decisions.
”It’s easy to leave. But then it will be difficult to enter. There is no need to leave, there is no need to freeze something,” said the Belarusian leader.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with “France24” on Thursday that Yerevan has suspended its participation in the CSTO.
