Minsk is ready to exchange the giant plant for cheap Russian gas
Belarus could sell Russia the Minsk Wheel Tractor Plant (MZKT), necessary for its military-industrial complex, in exchange for domestic gas prices.
Political scientist Alexander Shpakovsky, close to the Belarusian president, wrote about this on his Facebook, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“If MZKT is needed for the needs of the Russian military-industrial complex, then it must be sold. If the needs of the Belarusian economy require domestic Russian gas prices, then they should be provided, despite all Gazprom’s costs,” Shpakovsky wrote.
He believes that such a deal would be natural in the Union, for whose participants commercial benefits are secondary.
“If Belarus needs to sacrifice its interests in one direction or another for the sake of Russia, then this must be done. If there are costs for Belarus in this regard, then Russia should compensate them preventively,” the political scientist explained.
He added that in modern conditions such relations look utopian, so the relations of the allies resemble “a communal apartment where residents constantly share bills for water, gas and electricity.”
The tractors produced by MZKT are used to support the Iskander operational-tactical missile systems, the Smerch and Tornado multiple launch rocket systems, the S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems, and wheeled versions of the export Tor and Buk air defense systems. " In 2019, negotiations on the sale of a controlling stake in MZKT were led by the Russian Ambassador in Minsk Mikhail Babich, who was later recalled at the insistence of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
Belarusian political scientist Igor Tyshkevich believes that MZKT, which is one of the top ten world leaders in the production of wheeled chassis for special equipment, secretly supplies these products to Ukraine.
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