Lukashenko: I am sure we will never have to use nuclear weapons, but we must have them

I am sure we will never have to use nuclear weapons, but we must have them, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said at a solemn meeting to mark Belarus' Independence Day in Minsk on 30 June, BelTA has learned. «I once told you at a large forum: if you don't know what to do in a given situation, and your enemies go out of their way to persuade you of something, do the opposite. If they make a push against nuclear weapons, do the opposite,» Aleksandr Lukashenko said. The president recalled how the Belarusian opposition, self-exiled today, striving for power yesterday, would say: «When we come to power, we will shut down the Belarusian nuclear power plant, we do not need it.» «Why did they say that? Because they were told so from abroad, above all, by our neighbors — Poland, Lithuania.

What are they saying today? Lithuania has plans to build a new nuclear power plant, instead of the one they shut down. Poland plans to build two or three. Why did they advise our fools against building it? Why did they suggest closing it down.

No one needs competitors. Those who do not use breakthrough, modern, ultra-modern technologies are a decaying and dying state,» the president said. «Nuclear power is a state-of-the-art technology.

At a time when natural gas prices jumped to $2,000 per cubic meter, we paid $120. They paid $2,000, we — $120. When, they gave up on Russian cheap gas and oil, they began to say that nuclear energy is green energy, that it is the safest and needs to be developed.

Germany quietly postponed the closure of what they planned to close. France (they know how to build nuclear power plants, there are only 5 or 6 countries in the world that can do it) began to build new plants. All over the world, by the way.