Alexan­der Lukashenko, Belarus leader who claims to have won a dis­put­ed pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, said on Sat­ur­day that Vladimir Putin had promised him to help secur­ing safe­ty of Belarus if need­ed, the state news agency Belta reported.

“As far as mil­i­tary mat­ters are con­cerned, we have an agree­ment with Rus­sia  with­in the frame­work of the Union State and the CSTO [Col­lec­tive Secu­ri­ty Treaty Orga­ni­za­tion]. . . that cov­ers these inci­dents,” Mr Lukashenko said on Sat­ur­day after speak­ing to Putin, accord­ing to state news agency Belta.

The phone call came after Lukashenko said he need­ed to con­tact Moscow over grow­ing protests against his rule. 

“So I had a long and thor­ough dis­cus­sion about the sit­u­a­tion with the pres­i­dent of Rus­sia. I was even a bit sur­prised by how up to date he is on what’s going on,” he said.

“He and I agreed: at our first request they will pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive secu­ri­ty assis­tance to ensure Belarus’s security.”

Riots erupt­ed across the coun­try after the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion in Belarus gave the vic­to­ry to Lukashenko.

Protests in Belarus cap­i­tal Min­sk and oth­er cities con­tin­ued to explode this week. Police arrest­ed well over five thou­sand peo­ple nation­wide, and shoot­ings at demon­stra­tions left sev­er­al peo­ple injured and one per­son report­ed­ly had been killed. Cur­rent­ly, thou­sands of peo­ple dis­agreed with the elec­tion results again took to the streets of cities, they flood­ed the streets in oppo­si­tion to elec­tion results that indi­cate long­time author­i­tar­i­an leader Lukashenko had secured the win.