11:35 27-11-2025

Lukashenko: NATO Spending Shows West Preparing War

© North Atlantic Treaty Organization / www.nato.int

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko tells a CSTO summit that NATO defence spending and Poland’s build-up show the West is preparing for war against Russia.

At a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko claimed that the countries of the so-called collective West are deliberately preparing for war.

He drew attention to the fact that in 2025 alone, total NATO defence spending reached around 1.6 trillion dollars. Lukashenko also pointed out that Poland plans to raise its military budget by another 55 billion dollars next year, bringing it to roughly 5% of the country’s GDP. According to him, the size of the Polish army has already exceeded 200,000 personnel, and the Baltic states are not far behind Warsaw in building up their armed forces.

Lukashenko argued that all these factors, combined with what he described as aggressive rhetoric, indicate that Western politicians are purposefully gearing up for war. He added that military risks and threats are growing along the entire perimeter of CSTO borders, especially on the western flank, where the situation, in his view, should have remained more predictable. The current atmosphere, he said, increasingly resembles that of a besieged fortress.