Lukashenko talks about the "incredible operation" against Russian A-50 plane, he asked Russia for its replacement

Self-proclaimed President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has said that Belarus had detained an alleged "terrorist of the Ukrainian secret services" and his accomplices, who were "involved in an attempted sabotage of an A-50 aircraft at the Machulishchy airfield". Earlier, Lukashenko did not admit that anything had happened in Machulishchy.

Source: Belarusian state-owned national news agency BelTA

Quote: "The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) and the CIA leadership are either working on the side or behind the back of the Republic of Belarus. A terrorist has been trained. He is a Russian with a Russian passport and a Ukrainian passport.

He was born in Kryvyi Rih and lived in Crimea. Some relatives are in Austria; some stayed in Kyiv. He was recruited by the Ukrainian Secret Service in 2014, I think. He is an IT specialist or well versed in IT technologies. He was preparing to commit terrorist acts."

Details: Lukashenko said that the saboteur was "trained" by the SSU and used "the highest technologies".

Quote: "What we saw when we implemented the operation in Belarus was really something incredible. The highest technologies were involved. He learned all this in more than one month. After training, he was routed [as the Belarusian KGB says] to our territory."

Lukashenko also expectedly blamed Kyiv for everything. As the self-proclaimed Belarusian president states, the "operation" originates from the Ukrainian capital.

According to Lukashenko, the "saboteur" chose the route "Warsaw – Brest, Warsaw – Lodz – Riga – Pskov, and then Minsk".

Quote: "I won't go into detail about how the instruments of crime, these drones, were transferred. They chose a small drone. Because if they had used a large one, our surveillance systems would have tracked it, of course.

But we established that this small Chinese-made drone, which is also sold in our stores, was sold in the United States (this Chinese drone), and then it was brought back to Ukraine. And in Ukraine, these two drones were used, this person was trained, and others helped him."

Details: Lukashenko continues to insist that the Russian aircraft did not suffer any significant damage other than "scratches and one hole in the hull".

Quote: "We showed you this plane. As I was told, it even met the president [Lukashenko – ed.] when I was returning from Beijing. However, we asked the Russians to take this plane for maintenance and send us another one. That's what happened."

Background:

• On 26 February, explosions occurred at the Machulishchy airbase in Belarus in the morning. Later, there was information that a Russian A-50 military aircraft was damaged.
• Alexander Azarov, Head of the BYPOL initiative, reported that Belarusian partisans were involved in sabotage at the Machulishchy airbase in Belarus. According to Azarov, the participants of the alleged sabotage in Machulishchy had left Belarus and are now safe.
• After the explosion, the self-proclaimed president of Belarus' entourage claimed that the A-50 was fine and posted allegedly "fresh videos", although the military monitoring media outlet Belaruski Hajun reported that the Russian aircraft flew to Taganrog, Russia, for repairs.
• Andrii Yusov, a representative of Ukraine's Defence Intelligence, said that Russia cannot currently produce A-50 AWACS aircraft, one of which was probably damaged at the Belarusian Machulishchy airbase.

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