November 14, 2019, 10:01 pm / Politics

Lukashenko wants to receive fighter jets from Russia for free

Although Belarus is already buying them with Russian loan funds Ivan Safronov

Lukashenko wants to receive fighter jets from Russia for free / EPA / TASS

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko reproached Russia on Thursday for its reluctance to supply modern weapons. “Recently, Belarus purchased Su-30SM aircraft from Russia with its own money. But we also perform the functions of protecting the people of Russia in this direction. So why don't we help? – Lukashenko said on Thursday (quoted by BelTA). “We know how to use them [weapons] no worse than the Russians, but we pay colossal amounts of money for it.” He stated this in connection with the arrival at the 61st air base of the Belarusian Air Force and Air Defense in Baranovichi of the first two of the 12 Su-30SM fighters ordered by Belarus in 2017.

Lukashenko's statement only means that he expected to receive a squadron of Su-30SM for free, says a senior federal official. But Russia already supplies new aircraft to its CSTO partners at domestic rather than export prices, he clarifies: this is exactly how the Su-30SM were purchased by Kazakhstan and Armenia.

Making an exception for Belarus means creating a precedent that will skew the entire system of arms exports to the CSTO, says Vedomosti’s interlocutor: “In addition, Alexander Grigorievich has a very interesting understanding of what is his own funds and what is not, since there is a possibility that the payment was made not from a targeted loan for the purchase of fighters, but from an unrelated loan that we had previously issued for other needs.” According to a person close to the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the reason for Lukashenko’s statements is related to disagreements between Moscow and Minsk regarding the deployment of Russian fighters at the 61st air base. Agreements on this were reached in 2013. In December of the same year, a flight of four Russian Su-27SM3s went on joint combat duty with Belarusian Air Force fighters, but soon flew away at Lukashenko’s request, and he himself stated that he would not allow the deployment of foreign military facilities : “He was under pressure from the outside - and he simply could not resist.” After this, there was no talk of any gratuitous supplies of aircraft.

Since 2014, Belarus has been supplying Ukraine with MAZ trucks and spare parts that are critical for the Ukrainian army; in the conflict in Donbass, the Ukrainian side is using anti-tank missiles of joint Ukrainian-Belarusian development, says Konstantin Makienko, an expert at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. In this situation, the sale of fighters to Belarus at preferential prices and on Russian credit is a policy of unprecedented generosity in response to a policy of unprecedented impudence. In the modern world, apparently, only Russia is capable of this: when the United States in the late 90s. learned that their close ally, Israel, was going to sell China radars for early warning aircraft, they immediately twisted the Israelis’ arms and got the deal canceled, Makienko recalls. Although relations between the United States and China in those days were not close to the current relations between Russia and Ukraine, the expert emphasizes.

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In 2016–2017 Belarus bought 12 Mi-8MTV-5 transport helicopters

/ Press service of the Republic of Belarus