MINSK. March 11 (Interfax) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said he has no doubt that Belarus will not encounter an external armed aggression; however, attempts will be taken to undermine the country from the inside, so he has urged the military to deter internal threats.
"No one is going to attack us by groups, as they did in 1941. The situation has changed. That would be too obvious, and should such a thing happen, there will be WWIII. So they will be undermining us from the inside. We have had such experience to an extent. They slightly scratched us in August after the elections, dug their tooth into us. The tooth broke. Now all of their teeth will dig into us, and that would be done from the inside," the Belarusian state-run news agency BelTA quoted Lukashenko as saying on Thursday.
"I am telling you for the record that we, the military people, will have to be protecting our homeland here, from the inside. Do not sit in your camps and wait for somebody to cross our border so that we pick up our weapons and go to war. We will be fighting from here. You should be prepared for that," Lukashenko said.
"That's because we need to protect - let us not talk about the sovereignty, independence, and the state, which is only natural because this is what we are paid for (we are not paid much, but still) - we need to protect our families. And the families of our people. This is it. The math is simple," Lukashenko said.
Belarus has seen continuous protests against the official results of the presidential election that took place on August 9, 2020. The authorities declared incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko the winner. Lukashenko has been in office since 1994. The opposition does not recognize the results of the presidential election, saying the election was rigged. The protesters are demanding Lukashenko's resignation, the release of political prisoners, and a new election. The protests have become local recently.