“There is no need to kneel before the Russians” - Lukashenko
President Alexander Lukashenko demanded that specialists from the Belarusian military-industrial complex create a combat missile with a range of up to 300 kilometers.
He stated this yesterday during a visit to the experimental testing site of the research and production LLC OKB TSP in Machulishchi, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We need our own rocket. We cannot create weapons that will make us dependent on other countries. If Russia imposes unacceptable conditions on us, then imagine how other states will behave. Nobody will just give you this weapon. We were lucky to reach an agreement with the Chinese. They should be bowed down for this. But this dependence should not continue. If you see how they behave at the training grounds, then imagine, this is...,” Lukashenko said.
Let us remind you that Belarus is proud that, together with China, they created the Polonaise multiple launch rocket systems.
Director of OKB TSP Gennady Kiryachok complained that it has not yet been possible to agree with Russia on testing the missile, although “the Russian option would be optimal from a logistics point of view.” Lukashenko emotionally interrupted him.
“There is no need to kneel before the Russians. This is a signal. If our closest ally not only did not agree with us to make this missile, but does not provide the test site, this is a question,” Lukashenko said.
He complained that “there is no extra money, but we have to spend money on the defense industry.” And the developers admitted that they were not meeting the deadlines, but promised to carry out the first launch in September.
“I am surprised that this is not some kind of super production, not hypersonic missiles, that we cannot create this missile,” said the Belarusian president.
In March, the Belarusian military tested in flight an anti-aircraft guided missile for the Buk-MB complex, which is allegedly comparable in characteristics to the Russian S-300 and the American Patriot. The degree of localization of this product is higher than in Polonaise. The developers are especially proud of the active homing head, which allows it to perform radio interception tasks at a distance of up to 70 km.
Russian military expert Alexander Fadeev argued that Belarus has been curtailing military-strategic cooperation with Russia since 2014, refocusing on creating weapons in cooperation with other countries, starting with small arms and ending with Belarusian-Ukrainian grenade launchers. Belarus has already supplied Polonaise systems to Azerbaijan, without coordinating this step with Russia.
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