Lukashenko Has Lost His Instinct For Self-preservation

Ukraine can respond.

The other day, the head of the State Committee of Military Industry of Belarus Dmitri Pantus discussed "cooperation in the field of unmanned aircraft systems" with Tatarstan's Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Korobchenko. Back in March, Lukashenko promised to build Russia a drone factory that they would never build themselves. For Russian money, of course. Because the smell of money completely discourages both common sense and the instinct of self-preservation in the Belarusian authorities. Although just now it is time for the instinct of self-preservation to turn on.

Apogee - ahead

The Belarusian authorities were not ashamed to make money on the blood of Ukrainians. For Lukashenko this war from the very beginning was about his personal little profit - terminals in the port of Odessa, which he was to receive as a reward for assisting Putin's aggression. It is true that it did not work out with Kiev in three days and the port of Odessa. But the Belarusian authorities found a way to make money on the war in Ukraine.

First, equipment and surplus weapons from the Belarusian warehouses were used for the war. Then Belarusian industry joined the war. The longer the war in Ukraine lasts, the more Belarus participates in it.

"We are working very closely with the Russian Federation, cooperation ties have reached their peak, and today military-technical cooperation between our countries is at a kind of maximum," Pantus recently boasted.

Well, of course, he was being modest about the peak. The apogee is still ahead of us. The construction of a factory for 100 thousand drones, which Lukashenko promised for Russian money, has all chances to become such an apogee. Unless, of course, they are shot down on takeoff. And they can even do that.

One base - one destiny

Because it is not only the chairman of the Belarusian State Committee of Military Industry who boasted about the apogee. Ukrainian intelligence has also noticed the apogee.

"The Belarusian military-industrial complex has become an annex of the Russian one. About 80 percent of Belarusian military-industrial complex enterprises are integrated into the Russian military-industrial complex. It is practically one base," said the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine Oleg Ivashchenko.

And if there is one base, then there is also one fate. The fate of Russian military plants now is to be a target for Ukrainian attacks. Belarus in this sense remains a safe harbor for Russian military production. It is not for nothing that Russian authorities want to build their giant drone factory in Belarus.

But the status of a safe harbor is preserved thanks to the good will of the Ukrainian authorities. And a little bit more by the fact that they don't want to risk opening a second front. But good will is such a thing, which has the property to end. And the Belarusian-Russian VTS is already at such an apogee that this apogee may outweigh the risks of opening a second front.

The more so that the potential of the Belarusian front is treated without respect in Ukraine. The head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine assessed not only the Belarusian-Russian VTS, but also the combat capability of the Belarusian army.

"To date, the Belarusian army is not capable of large-scale combat operations," said Ivashchenko.

It's not just the fact that such words are offensive to the Belarusian generals. Belarusian generals will somehow survive the offense. It is not the first time. The main risk here is that complicity in the war and a powerless army is a dangerous combination.

I warned you

So Ivashchenko's words about Belarus' complicity in the war and the Belarusian military potential should be taken as a warning. Especially since it's not only the head of the Ukrainian intelligence agency who's been talking about it lately.

President Zelenski has repeatedly frightened the Belarusian neighbors with the fact that an attack on the neighbors is being prepared from the territory of Belarus. And the neighbors in principle do not mind to be a little scared. So if unknown drones fly to a Belarusian military plant, connected with the Russian defense industry, no one will object. They fly to Russian factories on a regular basis.

Of course, you can threaten inevitable retaliation with Russian nuclear warheads. But threats don't impress anyone anymore. After the attack on Russian strategic bombers, the red lines have shifted somewhere over the horizon.

So the State Military Industrial Committee should not boast of its apogee once again. Although such an apogee cannot be hidden anyway. Therefore, it is time to turn on the instinct of self-preservation.

Andrei Bronishevsky, planbmedia.io.

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