MINSK. March 1 (Interfax) - Belarusian Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Ambrazevich has warned about the threat of a direct clash between nuclear powers in the event of escalation in Ukraine.
"For Belarus, it is obvious that naming the winner on the battlefield in a classic sense of traditional wars will fail to eliminate security threats and settle the amassed contradictions," the Belarusian state-run news agency BelTA quoted Ambrazevich as saying at the Disarmament Conference in Geneva on Wednesday.
"The ongoing militarization of Ukraine with increasingly advanced, longer range weapons heightens the risk of drawing new states into the conflict and may lead to a direct clash between nuclear powers," he said.
"A blast in Ukraine, in Europe, will hit everyone. No one will be able to hide," Ambrazevich said.
Speaking of signs of the rising global security crisis, he mentioned "the impotence demonstrated by the Disarmament Conference for 20 years, the practically complete paralysis of the Biological Weapons Convention and the 'inhumane weapons' convention, the dismantlement of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the disregard of lawful security interests of neighbors by certain countries over years."
"Above all, this includes NATO's eastward enlargement and the actual refusal of the United States to discuss Russia's proposals on security guarantees in Europe at the end of 2021. Ukraine is what happened as a result," Ambrazevich said.