President answers journalists' questions

First of all, journalists asked the President about the progress of the election campaign.

"I was informed yesterday that more than 700 thousand signatures have been collected to date. Something like that," said Alexander Lukashenko.

The President noted that he had not yet had time to closely monitor the election campaign, since there were enough things to do at the end of the year, and there were many trips both around the country and abroad. In addition, it was also necessary to monitor the completion of the harvesting campaign.

"There is no fear that everyone who wants to will participate. We will no longer allow the country to be bent, or brought to its knees, God forbid, or destroyed. This is out of the question, no matter how much someone would like it," the President added.

"You don't become a President - you're born a President. A person must have fundamental qualities by nature that will be useful to him as President," the Belarusian leader explained. "There are many of them. Maybe one, two, or maybe all of them. This is very important."

To illustrate his words, Alexander Lukashenko turned to the example of the United States and the recent elections there, where a woman ran for President. The methods of conducting an election campaign there are completely different. In particular, there were very harsh, even offensive statements addressed to the female candidate. Alexander Lukashenko said that if someone in Belarus allowed themselves to do something like that, they would lose a significant part of the electorate.

"But for American society, this is probably normal. They held their elections. Remember, I said before the elections: America is ready to elect a black man (there was a black President), America is probably not ready to elect a woman President yet," the Head of State noted.

In his opinion, Kamala Harris lost the election largely due to the decisions of the Democratic Party and Joe Biden. "They understood this, and there was no need to set Kamala up. She did what she could - she conducted propaganda, campaigned, tolerated all sorts of bullying, moved the Democratic Party forward," said Alexander Lukashenko. He believes that the Democratic Party could have nominated other, stronger candidates for the elections. "The Democratic Party had good candidates, they could have nominated them, and Trump might not have coped," he noted.

But now that the results of the US elections and the name of the winner of the presidential race are already known, it is important that Donald Trump fulfilled his campaign promises, Alexander Lukashenko emphasized. "In America, it's easy - to promise and not fulfill. It's everywhere now, but even more so with them. But he is still an experienced person, this bulldozer. Just so that it didn't get worse for the whole world. Because it is the leading economy, the leading country, a monopolist, one might say, in all respects, including in politics. So that he didn't get carried away. Donald has this - he can get carried away. I would really like him to make America great without harming us, without harming the whole world, and not to clash with Russia, China and everyone else. We must be very careful. I think that the first term (of Trump's presidency - Ed.) taught him this," the Belarusian leader said.