Belarusian MoD Announces Receipt Of S-400 And Iskanders

They can carry out fire damage to both ground and air targets at long ranges.

Assistant to the Minister of Defense for ideological work in the Armed Forces of Belarus, head of the main department of ideological work of the Ministry of Defense Leanid Kasinski spoke on STV about the accelerated process of obtaining the S-400 air defense systems and the Iskander missile systems.

“We have long been discussing that we would like to have these types of weapons in our combat strength. And today, probably, the situation that is developing around our country, today's time has determined to speed up the process of obtaining these samples,” Kasinski said.

According to him, Iskander and S-400 “can carry out fire destruction of both ground and air targets at long ranges, in strategic depth”.

“Today, our servicemen, crews, brigades, have completed a full training course at joint combat training centers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. These types of weapons are on combat duty today and are fully ready to perform their intended tasks. In addition, during the meeting of the heads of state, the issue of converted air weapons capable of using special ammunition was raised. Today, as the heads of state said, the planes have been re-equipped, and the flight and flight-technical personnel are being trained to perform tasks,” Kasinski added.

Earlier, on December 19, Vladimir Putin supported the implementation of Lukashenka's proposals to train the crews of combat aircraft of the Belarusian army, which have already been converted for the possible use of air-launched ammunition with a special warhead. He also announced the transfer of the S-400 air defense systems and the Iskander missile system to Belarus.

At the same time, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that “it is not planned either to physically equip Belarusian systems with nuclear warheads, or to move such warheads to Belarusian territory”, “the creation of facilities for storing nuclear warheads in Belarus is also not envisaged, they will continue to be concentrated in central warehouses within the territory of Russia”, and “the training of Belarusian military personnel will be carried out in Russian training centers according to programs that exclude the issues of operating nuclear warheads.”

“At this stage, we are talking exclusively about the transfer to the Republic of Belarus of dual-equipped Iskander-M complexes with conventional missiles, as well as giving some of the Belarusian Su-25 aircraft the technical ability to carry nuclear weapons. At the same time, there are no plans to transfer the technologies for converting aircraft into carriers of nuclear weapons,” said Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry.