On October 11, 2024, during a broadcast of the program “Editors' Club” on the state-run TV channel “Belarus 1”, Gaydukievich spoke about the non-conflict nature of official Minsk while commenting on Aleksandr Lukashenko receiving Russia's highest state award — the Order of Saint Andrew the First-Called.
Here is what Gaydukievich said:
“For these 30 years in the CIS, our president has not caused a single conflict, there hasn’t been a single statement that offended anyone, nor any issue for which we could be reproached.”
In mid-May 2024, during a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Aleksandr Lukashenko stated that the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020 was liberating.
“I recalled our conversation before the war, before your liberation war, when we philosophically discussed over lunch. We concluded that victory is possible in war. This is important. It is very important to hold onto that victory,” Lukashenko was quoted by the Azerbaijani state news agency.
A month later, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan responded to this statement:
“One of the leaders of CSTO countries claims he was involved in preparing for the war, encouraged it, believed in it, and wished for Azerbaijan's victory. And after that, am I supposed to discuss something with the head of Belarus in the CSTO format? <...> I declare that I will never go to Belarus again as long as Alexander Lukashenko is president. In fact, I announce that from this moment on, no official representative of Armenia will go to Belarus. Not at all.”
Armenia is the only Commonwealth of Independent States member that did not join a statement condemning unilateral sanctions against Belarus and Russia, in early October 2024 at the CIS Foreign Ministers’ Council in Moscow.