Recently Belarus has formed a new anti-aircraft missile regiment and stationed it in Luninets, 50 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. This short news reflects many of Alexander Lukashenko’s fears.

A recent announcement by the Belarusian Defense Ministry about the creation of a new military unit said, «In forming the regiment, special attention was paid to the creation of modern military infrastructure and  educational material resources of military preparation, the provision of comfortable accommodation conditions for  military personnel, as well as issues concerning social support for soldiers and members of their families.»

It should be noted that everything was done very quickly, literally in an emergency order. The regiment was formed in a few weeks, and on March 23, the new military unit in Luninets was visited by the Belarussian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin. From the very beginning, Ministry of Defense stated that he «besides carrying out the inspection, will hand over the keys of the flats to the military personnel who have arrived in Luninets to serve». Well, it’s customary to show the state’s social care for servicemen.

On arriving in Luninets, Viktor Khrenin rather awkwardly explained the need for the formation of a new missile anti-aircraft regiment in the small town, «The situation around our country is not getting quieter. There is an active militarization of the West and a rapid increase in military potential near our borders. Ukraine is being pumped with weapons and the Ukrainian leadership is unpredictable in its actions. We are forced to act adequately to the challenges and threats that may arise towards our national security. Therefore, it was decided to establish a new anti-aircraft missile regiment on the basis of the existing military unit in Luninets.»

However, judging by the photos of the weapons that the new anti-aircraft regiment received, it will defend the aerial frontiers of the motherland with a rare piece of old junk. The military in Luninets received air defense systems S-300PS familiar for a long time to them. Such systems have been produced in the USSR since 1982.  And 16 divisions of these machines, namely 192 launchers with four missiles on each, have been in service with the Belarusian army for many years.

They are considered morally and technically outdated systems, and ones are little used throughout the world. For example, the 201st Russian military base in Tajikistan is armed with such systems. There is, of course, the possibility that the Luninets regiment has also been supplied with the significantly more modern Russian S-400. However, so far nobody even saw them there, though these weapons are no longer secret military ones (Rather, it could be classified as obsolete).

In general, it is certainly the monumental hypocrisy of the Belarusian authorities. For more than a year, missiles have been flying into Ukrainian cities from the territory of Belarus, combat drones have been launched, planes have been risen for bombing and reconnaissance… But the Belarusian authorities and the country’s military leadership continue to claim that the threat comes from Ukraine. The same Ukraine that Lukashenko predicted would be defeated in a few days.

It is worth noting that today Belarus has four anti-aircraft missile regiments deployed in addition to the new Luninets one: 115th anti-aircraft artillery regiment in Brest, 377th Guards anti-aircraft missile regiment, which is placed in Polotsk (Vitebsk region), 740th anti-aircraft missile regiment (control in Borisov) and 147th anti-aircraft missile regiment in Bobruisk (Mogilev region). For a relatively small country like Belarus, this is a very large amount of air defense equipment.

The creation of a new anti-aircraft missile regiment in Luninets is evidence that the Belarusian authorities are afraid. They fear that Moscow will sooner or later force Alexander Lukashenko to join the war raging at our southern border. After all, now the Ukrainian army is openly preparing for a major spring military offensive. There can be no doubt, when things get really bad for the Russian troops, Putin will surely try taking advantage of diversionary attack from the territory of Belarus. And since too many Russian soldiers have already gone home in black body bags, Moscow would most assuredly force Belarussian involvement in a military conflict in order to send the Belarusian Armed Forces units into offensive actions.

Ukraine, of course, will not tolerate this and find effective ways to retaliate. Nowadays the entire south of Belarus is within the kill zone of the famous HIMARS systems, meanwhile, the Armed Forces of Ukraine has even the longer ranged systems in its arsenal. In addition, Ukraine receives more and more new aircraft.

Namely the retaliatory strike is exactly what the Belarusian leadership fears, after all, it has already once made our country a springboard for aggression against a peaceful country. But the big question is whether the old Soviet air defense systems, which are at least a couple of generations behind the current level of modern weaponry, will be able to withstand this strike. What’s the military got to do with it, though? The main thing for them is to execute an order, and military regulations determine what you are supposed to think

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