ALexandr Lukashenko has confirmed the drone attack on a Russian A-50 reconnaissance aircraft at a military airport near the Belarusian capital of Minsk at the end of February. During an award ceremony on Tuesday, the ruler spoke of a “terrorist attack” for which he blamed Ukrainian and American secret services.
The BYPOL group, which unites renegade Belarusian security forces, reported the attack two days ago, in which the plane was damaged. Belarusian partisans, who are already out of the country, carried him out.
A deputy Belarusian foreign minister spoke of a “fake” because there were no official Belarusian comments on it. The Kremlin referred to a Belarusian denial when there was none. Lukashenko’s propaganda claimed for days that the A-50 was undamaged and doing the usual service, even “accompanied” Lukashenko’s plane on the return flight from a trip to China.
At the same time, however, a resident of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, was put out for investigation because of the incident. Independent Belarusian media reported that the A-50 had been sent to southwestern Russia’s Taganrog for repairs.
Lukashenko now admitted the plane was damaged, but “fortunately” not much. In addition, Lukashenko said the “terrorist” who lived in Crimea and “accomplices” had been arrested. “The highest technologies” were used in the attack, said Lukashenko, and insulted the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, without whose consent “such an operation” could not have been carried out, as “Nisse”. In criminal jargon, this refers to prisoners who cannot defend themselves. Zelenskyy’s office, on the other hand, said the attack on the A-50 was “an anti-terrorist act carried out by partisans”.
But Lukashenko also, as is his custom, lashed out at the Russian allies, who use Belarus as a staging area during the war: he blamed the “Ukrainian saboteur” for getting to Belarus on Russian border guards, who had let him through . In addition, Lukashenko emphasized that the Russian plane in Belarus was “not a Russian plane” but part of a joint Belarusian-Russian unit.