• Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Alexander Lukashenko apologized in a call for helping Russia invade Ukraine.
• "I am not in charge," Zelenskyy quoted the Belarusian leader as saying in early 2022.
• Lukashenko's spokesperson denied that an apology took place but confirmed that a call happened.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Belarus' leader, Alexander Lukashenko, apologized over the phone in early 2022 for his country's role in allowing Russia to invade Ukraine.

In a wide-ranging interview with the podcaster Lex Fridman published on Sunday, Zelenskyy recalled the war's first moments, saying that he and his wife were woken up by missile strikes at 4 a.m. local time.

"My children were asleep, but my wife was awake. There were strikes. Missile strikes, we heard them," Zelenskyy said, according to a translation provided by Fridman.

"And later, by the way, a few days after, after the first days of the war, I spoke with Lukashenko on the phone," Zelenskyy added.

Zelenskyy recounted the conversation, in his words, proceeding in this fashion:

And he apologized. And he said that: "It was not me. Missiles were launched from my territory, and Putin was the one launching them."

These are his words. I have witnesses.

"And I apologize," he said. "But believe me. Volodya, this is not me. I am not in charge. I am not in charge," he told me. "These are just missiles. This is Putin. I told him don't do that. This was done without me."

I told him that I believed him. I told him, "You are a murderer too, I'm just saying."

And he told me, "You must understand, you can't fight the Russians."

I told him that we never fought them. I said: "It's war, the missiles came from your land, from Belarus. How did you allow this?"

Zelenskyy also said Lukashenko suggested in his apology that Ukraine should strike an oil refinery in Belarus in retaliation.

"Hit the refinery, you know how much I care about it," Zelenskyy quoted Lukashenko as saying.

Lukashenko's spokesperson denied on Monday that the Belarusian leader apologized to Zelenskyy.

"The President of Belarus did not apologize to Zelensky for the simple reason that we have nothing to apologize for," Natalia Eismont, Lukashenko's press secretary, told the pro-Kremlin Russian outlet RBC News.

Eismont confirmed that a phone call between Zelenskyy and Lukashenko took place days after the war began. She added, however, that the Belarusian leader had instead admonished Zelenskyy and blamed the latter's policies for the conflict during the call.

Eismont said Lukashenko's youngest son connected the two leaders for the call because he'd saved Zelenskyy's personal contact information on his mobile phone.

Belarus has maintained close ties to Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and Lukashenko, its leader since 1994, has long been a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lukashenko hosted some 30,000 Russian troops, as well as weapons and armored vehicles, in early 2022. The Russian forces massed on Belarus' border with Ukraine and eventually invaded the Kyiv region from the north.

Belarus, a transit country for Russian energy to European countries, is heavily reliant on trade with Moscow, especially after Western sanctions in 2022 stifled about 70% of Minsk's exports to the European Union.

Lukashenko's government has said Russia contributes to more than half of Belarus' trade, while German researchers estimated in the first year of the Ukraine war that the Russian share of Belarusian trade had surpassed 60%.

Lukashenko's press service didn't respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.