{"id":11413,"date":"2022-05-12T15:21:43","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T12:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/api.pozirk.online\/longreads\/ukraine-war-forces-officials-to-think-of-new-approach-to-arms-procurement\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T20:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T20:29:13","slug":"ukraine-war-forces-officials-to-think-of-new-approach-to-arms-procurement","status":"publish","type":"longreads","link":"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/longreads\/11413\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine war forces officials to think of new approach to arms procurement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n <span>By Aliaksandr Klasko\u016dski<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t * Reproduction prohibited\n<\/p>\n<p>\n <b>Russian failures in Ukraine have prompted Minsk to review its approach to defense procurement. Aliaksandr Luka\u0161enka seems to be less willing to splash cash on Russian equipment.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t \u201cWe don\u2019t need so many and those types of weapons that we wanted to have,\u201d the Belarusian ruler told defense officials on May 10, citing lessons learned from hostilities in Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Luka\u0161enka pointed out the importance of mobile units, noting that large, high-tech armed forces, such as the U.S. or NATO, have a tremendous potential to destroy airfields and infrastructure in one or two hours.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Liebiadok: Russian army loses expensive equipment<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t When talking about Ukraine\u2019s experience, Luka\u0161enka was referring to the Russian forces\u2019 heavy losses of expensive equipment, Jahor Liebiadok, a Belarusian defense analyst, told The Viewer.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t The Ukrainian army\u2019s resistance proved that not only hardware superiority, but also skills and tactics are crucial in warfare, he noted.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Ukrainian mobile groups have delivered effective strikes on superior numbers of enemy forces, especially logistical support units, Luka\u0161enka said on May 10.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t The Belarusian army has been built according to Russian systems and is reliant on Russian suppliers. Belarusian generals seem to have doubts about that approach, Liebiadok said. Ukrainians used drones and simple weapons to destroy expensive air defense systems and aircraft, he added.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Cheaper and effective<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t Luka\u0161enka said that he had ordered the military to focus on agility about ten years ago: &#8220;As it turns out today, we were right, we have won in this respect. We have a 65,000 to 70,000-strong army. It seems compact, but it is not small, it is very agile. . .&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Belarusian generals may be thinking that it does not make sense to buy eight more Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter jets from Russia as planned, if the aircraft can be shot down by Stinger missiles or old air defense systems, Liabiadok said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t He added that it does not make sense to invest in expensive upgrades of main battle tanks (MBTs) because the upgraded MBTs were also vulnerable to anti-tank weapons and did not seem to be much better than non-upgraded MBTs.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t The Belarusian military runs a large-scale program to upgrade T-72B MBTs to the T-72B3 version at Russia\u2019s Uralvagonzavod facility.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Minsk has a contract buy 12 Su-30SM fighters from Russia\u2019s Irkut. The company supplied four fighter jets to the 61<sup>st<\/sup> Fighter Air Base in Baranavi\u010dy in November 2019.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Financing<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t Defense Minister Viktar Chrenin said after the meeting that Minsk would use Russia\u2019s export loan to finance the purchase of the Su-30SM, helicopters and Tor-M2 anti-aircraft missile systems. He would not elaborate on the arrangement.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Minsk might use the undrawn amount of a loan left after the construction of the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant, said Andrej Parotnika\u016d, of Belarus Security Blog.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Although Minsk had made proposals to that effect, Moscow has not yet publicly approved the arrangement.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Missile systems<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t Belarus and Russia have agreed to keep Russian Iskander and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems in Belarus, Luka\u0161enka said, noting that Minsk would prefer to buy the Iskanders deployed to Belarus instead of sending them back to Russia.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Russia deployed an S-400 battalion (up to six launchers) to Belarus last year for equipping a Belarusian-Russian training center. It sent two additional battalions for the Union Resolve 2022 exercises and to support Russian troops in their operations in Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t &#8220;These weapons have a range that covers the entire territory of Poland and up to the Baltic Sea, not to mention the Baltic states, as well as a good chunk of Ukraine beyond Kyiv. God forbid, I&#8217;m not hinting at anything, but we need to understand the range of the weapons that we have,&#8221; Luka\u0161enka said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Russian military units, including up to eight Iskander-M tactical missile systems, according to Ukrainian sources, and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, still remain in Belarus after Russia\u2019s failed operation to capture Kyiv.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Liebiadok doubts that Vladimir Putin will transfer the state-of-the-art systems under Belarus\u2019 control. The Kremlin will be looking to leave these systems under Russian control, for instance as equipment for training missile operators, he noted.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Defense budget will not be revised<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t Chrenin said that the government will not revise its 2022 defense budget totaling 1.8 billion rubels ($700 million).\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Belarus spent 1.3 percent of its GDP on defense in 2020, said SIPRI. The proportion remained roughly the same in the last two years.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t \u201cBelarus is a poor country with a small proportion of defense spending. The army is financed with whatever funds remain,\u201d Parotnika\u016d said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Luka\u0161enka has spent heavily on training and equipping security forces for suppressing protests. As far as regular troops are concerned, he hopes for financial and material support from Moscow.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t He has repeatedly said that he had reached deals with Putin to supply Belarus with advanced weapons. However, his announcements seemed to be nothing but wishful thinking.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Although he is critical of Russia\u2019s military capability, he has no option but to rely on Moscow for military hardware.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Aliaksandr Klasko\u016dski * Reproduction prohibited Russian failures in Ukraine have prompted Minsk to review its approach to defense procurement. Aliaksandr Luka\u0161enka seems to be less willing to splash cash on Russian equipment. \u201cWe don\u2019t need so many and those types of weapons that we wanted to have,\u201d the Belarusian ruler told defense officials on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"template":"","rubric":[24],"class_list":["post-11413","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>Ukraine war forces officials to think of new approach to arms procurement | Pozirk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By Aliaksandr Klasko\u016dski * Reproduction prohibited Russian failures in Ukraine have prompted Minsk to review its approach to defense procurement.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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