Russian news agencies quote Belarus’ Central Election Commission as saying that 65.2 percent of those who cast their votes voted for the new constitution. The outcome comes as no surprise, given that President Alexander Lukashenko is ruling Belarus with a heavy hand, allowing little opposition to his policies.
The new constitution allows nuclear weapons to be placed in Belarus for the first time since the country renounced them after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. “If you station nuclear weapons in Poland or Lithuania, along our borders, I will turn to Putin and ask him to return the nuclear weapons I gave away without any conditions,” Lukashenko warned the West on Sunday.