Rulers of Belarus and Russia, Aliaksandr Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin, agreed to deploy a joint regional group of troops. The Belarusian state-funded news agency BelTA reports that Lukashenka has said this at the meeting on security issues.
According to BelTA, Lukashenka recalled that he had a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the informal CIS summit in Russia's St. Petersburg:
"Given the worsening of the situation on the western borders of the Union State, we agreed to deploy a regional group of forces of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. This complies with our documents. It says that if the threat level reaches the level as it is now, we begin to use the Union State group of forces. The basis (I have always said this) of this group is the army, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus. I must inform you that the formation of this group has begun. It's been going on for, I think, two days. I gave an order to start forming this group," the Belarusian ruler said.
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