In response to the  unprecedented crackdown by Lukashenko against those who really won the August 2020 election, the European Commission imposed sanctions against Belarus. That prompted Lukashenko to retaliate by using migrants to allow them to cross into EU member state Poland.

On October 8, 2020 shots were fired into Poland, which turned the border crisis into an NATO issue. Poland is namely a NATO member. So Article 5 suppose to be activated. It never happened.

Lukashenko's own created conflict with the European Union fits with the problems Putin also has with the EU but over former Soviet states which are now members of the Union. He claims that the EU was expanding to the east, while it was the choice and the decision of the former Soviet states to be a member of the EU. They said that they do no longer want to have to do with Russia's past. 

Putin accuses NATO of having done the same, while the Baltic states, for example, made their own choice and decision to be a member of the military alliance. He began to show mixing up his own EU problems with his own NATO problems by sending two nuclear bombers to the border between Poland and Belarus. It's here were his anti-NATO rhetoric and demands come from.