Zelensky says Belarusian dictator apologized in phone call for helping Russia attack Ukraine early in war

• Zelensky said Alexander Lukashenko apologized when he called for help in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• Zelensky quoted the Belarusian leader as saying in early 2022: “I am not responsible.”

• Lukashenko’s spokesman denied apologising, but confirmed the call had been made.

Ukrainian President Zelensky said that Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko apologized by phone in early 2022 for allowing Russia to invade Ukraine.

In a wide-ranging interview with conservative podcaster Lex Fridman published Sunday, Zelensky recalled the first moments of the war, saying he and his wife were hit by missiles at 4 a.m. local time Attack wakes up.

“My kids were asleep, but my wife was awake. There was an attack. A missile attack, we heard it,” Zelensky said, according to a translation provided by Friedman.

“By the way, a few days later, after the first days of the war, I had a phone call with Lukashenko,” Zelensky added.

Zelensky recounted the conversation in his own words:

He apologized. “It was not me. The missile was launched from my territory, it was Putin who launched it,” he said.

These are his words. I have witnesses.

“I apologize,” he said. “But trust me. Volodya, this is not me. I am not responsible. I am not responsible,” he told me. “These are just missiles. This is Putin. I told him not to do this. This was done without me.”

I told him I believed him. I told him: “I’m just saying, you are a murderer too.”

“You have to understand, you can’t fight the Russians,” he told me.

I told him we never fought them. I said: “This is war, the missiles are coming from your land, from Belarus. How can you allow this to happen?”

Zelensky further said that in his apology, Lukashenko suggested that Ukraine attack Belarusian oil refineries in retaliation.

“A fight against the refinery, you know how much I care about it,” Zelensky quoted Lukashenko as saying.

Lukashenko’s spokesman denied on Monday that the Belarusian dictator had apologized to Zelensky.

“The president of Belarus has not apologized to Zelensky for the simple reason that we have nothing to apologize for,” Lukashenko’s press secretary Natalia Esmont told the pro-Kremlin Russian outlet RBC News. “

Esmont confirmed that the phone call between Zelenskyy and Lukashenko took place just days after the war began. However, she said the Belarusian leader instead warned Zelensky during the call and blamed the conflict on the latter’s policies.

Esmont said Lukashenko’s youngest son connected the two leaders because he had Zelensky’s personal contact information on his phone.

Belarus has maintained close ties with Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and Lukashenko, Belarus’ leader since 1994, has long been a close ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

In early 2022, Lukashenko hosted some 30,000 Russian troops as well as weapons and armored vehicles.

Belarus is a transit country for Russian energy to European countries and relies heavily on trade with Moscow, especially after Western sanctions in 2022 strangled about 70% of Minsk’s exports to the EU.

Lukashenko’s government has said that Russia accounts for more than half of Belarus’s trade, while German researchers estimate that Russia’s share of Belarus’s trade exceeded 60% in the first year of the Ukraine war.

Lukashenko’s press department did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment outside regular business hours.

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