{"id":11337,"date":"2022-01-21T05:57:59","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T02:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/api.pozirk.online\/longreads\/moscow-would-prefer-to-have-iskander-missiles-not-airbase-in-belarus\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T20:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T20:29:13","slug":"moscow-would-prefer-to-have-iskander-missiles-not-airbase-in-belarus","status":"publish","type":"longreads","link":"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/longreads\/11337\/","title":{"rendered":"Moscow would prefer to have Iskander missiles, not airbase in Belarus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n <span>By Aliaksandr Aliesin<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n <b>Moscow does not seem to be interested in establishing a permanent airbase in Belarus but it may be eager to deploy Iskander (NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone) missiles.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Belarusian and Russian pilots flew Sukhoi Su-30SM fighters on January 11 along the border of the Union State of Belarus and Russia as part of this year\u2019s second joint air patrol mission, said the Belarusian defense ministry. The jets also carried out patrol flights on January 5.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Russian involvement not limited to training<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t In March 2021, the defense ministers of Belarus and Russia approved a plan to set up two joint training centers in Russia and one in Belarus. Officials did not announce any plans for joint patrol flights at the time.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t The centers were supposed to train Belarusian pilots to fly the Su-30SM following the delivery of four fighter jets in November 2019. Minsk planned to sign another contract in 2021 for the delivery of four more Su-30SM jets in October 2022. However, the signing was postponed indefinitely.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t In early September 2021, Russian Su-30SM aircraft landed at the airfield of the 61st airbase in Baranivi\u010dy, Brest region. Belarusian and Russian Su-30SM fighters flew their first joint air patrol mission on September 9, 2021.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Failed plan to set up Russian airbase<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t Aliaksandr Luka\u0161enka in 2015 rejected Moscow\u2019s plan to establish a Russian airbase in Belarus. He apparently reasoned that the airbase would be a hard sell in the run-up to the 2015 presidential election. Minsk was seeking improved ties with the West at the time to counterbalance Russian influence.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Russians have cooled on the idea<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t After the 2020 disputed presidential election, Luka\u0161enka found himself significantly much more reliant on Moscow for his political survival. That must be a reason he approved the deployment of Russian equipment and trainers to the Baranavi\u010dy training center.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Legally, the center is not a Russian base; it is governed by Belarusian laws, which require Russian personnel to be rotated every two months. The requirement does not apply to equipment.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Moscow does not seem to be interested in transforming the center into a fully-fledged base and increasing the number of Russian personnel there. The center currently hosts three Russian Su-30SM fighter jets.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Observers note that any base in Belarus might be vulnerable to attacks from Poland\u2019s F-16 fighters armed with air-to-ground missiles with a range of up to 400 kilometers.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t On the other hand, distances of 500 to 600 kilometers do not matter much for Russian state-of-the art fighters, which can fly at a speed of more than 2000 kilometers per hour.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Missiles are a bigger scare<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t In terms of flexing muscles, the flights of Russian long-range bombers, the Tu-22M3 and the Tu-160, over Belarus must have made a greater impression on NATO in 2021.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t The bombers can carry nuclear missiles legally because a plane is the territory of the state to which it belongs under international law.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Moscow does not seem to consider it necessary to site an airbase in Belarus. It would prefer to have several brigades there equipped with Iskander M short-range ballistic missile systems. A typical Iskander M brigade has a dozen launch vehicles each carrying two missiles. Multiple reloads are said to be available, according the Foreign Policy Research Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Aliaksandr Aliesin Moscow does not seem to be interested in establishing a permanent airbase in Belarus but it may be eager to deploy Iskander (NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone) missiles. Belarusian and Russian pilots flew Sukhoi Su-30SM fighters on January 11 along the border of the Union State of Belarus and Russia as part [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"template":"","rubric":[22],"class_list":["post-11337","longreads","type-longreads","status-publish","hentry","rubric-theviewer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Moscow would prefer to have Iskander missiles, not airbase in Belarus | Pozirk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By Aliaksandr Aliesin Moscow does not seem to be interested in establishing a permanent airbase in Belarus but it may be eager to deploy Iskander (NATO\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/longreads\/11337\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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