Catastrophic disruption of security balance

Summary

The Belarus-West relationship in the security sector has been razed to the ground, and it will take years to restore it. Foreign defenders of the opinion that Belarus lacks independence in terms of military security have received eloquent evidence of that from the Belarusian regime.

Products of the domestic defense industry have basically exhausted their export potential. A wide range of innovative developments is needed to stay on the market, which requires considerable investments, but, in 2020, defense enterprises of Belarus only invested around USD 30 million in fixed assets.

The COVID-19 pandemic made a massive and profound impact on the entire national security and defense system, although the authorities kept denying the gravity of the pandemic.

The past year saw an unprecedented scale of personnel reshuffles in security and defense agencies. The role of the security bloc in preserving the current political system has increased dramatically.

Trends:

• Return to political confrontation practices in relation to the West, including demonstrative actions and militaristic statements;
• Deterioration (since 2018) of the financial and export performance of the defense industry, including with regard to exports to Russia;
• Development of promising weapon prototypes with an unclear timeframe for putting them into service;
• The transformation of repressive mechanisms into the only tool for retaining power.

Belarus – West: good start, disastrous end

The year 2020 was marked by positive dynamics in security and defense cooperation between Belarus and the West. Minsk voiced concern over NATO’s increasing activity near the Belarusian border, but did not show an intention to respond in any explicit way.

A joint exercise of Belarusian paratroopers and British marines was held in March 2020. It was just the level of a company, but it was still a breakthrough: for the first time, NATO soldiers stayed in Belarus with their own combat weapons.1 There was also a joint session of the Belarusian and Polish air force to exchange flight information.2

In June, for the first time ever, Chief of General Staff of Belarus Alexander Volfovich and UK Chief of Defense Staff Nick Carter had a phone talk to discuss bilateral cooperation events.3

Belarusian-British and Belarusian-Polish contacts can be regarded as attempts to find points of convergence of interests for dialogue and cooperation, and, generally, a display of Minsk’s wish to promote security dialogue with NATO and the United States.

After the presidential election of August 9, 2020 and the eruption of protests that followed, Belarus’ relationship with NATO and Poland changed fundamentally. The Belarusian leadership accused them not only of interfering in internal affairs (as usual), but also of preparing for an armed intervention to capture a part of the Belarusian territory. Belarus demonstratively redeployed brigade-size troops with the Polonez and Tochka-U strike missile systems to the Belarusian-Polish and the Belarusian-Lithuanian borders.

Eastern vector: from enmity to hugging

The pre-election period in Belarusian-Russian defense cooperation was pretty smooth despite the disagreements accumulated in the previous few years over the terms of military hardware supplies and the military doctrine of the so-called “Union State,” the draft of which was approved by Vladimir Putin in December 2018, while Alexander Lukashenko had not.

Shortly before the election, on July 29, the Belarusian KGB detained 33 Russian nationals, who, as the Belarusian authorities claimed, were soldiers of the so-called “Wagner Private Military Company” patronized by the Kremlin. According to Belarusian officials, nearly 200 Russians arrived to organize terrorist attacks. Despite the gravity of the charges brought at the highest level, the story ended in nothing: the detainees were released to Russia with apologies, and the rest of the “soldiers” were just forgotten.

The period after the presidential election can be described as Belarus’ drift toward Russia. Apart from verbal interventions, some demonstrative actions took place, such as the traditional Slavic Brotherhood 2020 anti-terror exercise that involved 800 servicemen, including about 300 delegated by Russia, and 170 pieces of materiel. It expanded later, when two additional battalion tactical groups of the Russian airborne troops arrived. One of them landed at the Brest training range. The initial anti-terror scenario of the exercise turned into an explicitly offensive one with troop landing, capture of the landing area, blockage of a populated locality, etc.

Russia sent Tu-160 strategic bombers and Tu-22 long-range bombers. As a result, the troops that took part in the final phase of the exercise numbered around 6,000 servicemen (over 900 Russians) and more than 550 pieces of hardware.4

The deployment of the Tu-160 strategic bombers was totally redundant, even in the final scenario of the exercise. External observers saw this as evidence of Minsk’s dependence in military security matters and Belarus’ overall inability to remain neutral in the event of an armed confrontation between Russia and NATO with all the consequences that come with this.

A scheduled visit of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to Minsk took place in September. For the first time since June 2013, Lukashenko met publicly with a high-ranking military official, whose visits to Belarus he had ignored for the past seven years because of the disputes over the plans to place a Russian airbase in Belarus. Lukashenko gave his endorsement to that in spring 2013, and then, in autumn 2015, he said he had never heard about this idea before.

Defense industry: downward trend

The Belarusian defense industry continued working on the domestic Buk-MB3K medium-range anti-aircraft missile system. Test launches of the 9M318 anti-aircraft guided missiles without warheads took place on February 19 and 25.5 Target-hitting launches were scheduled for late 2020, but were canceled for unknown reasons.

It was said that a kamikaze UAV with a range of 25 km was worked on, and the integration of destruction means into the available unmanned aerial systems was under consideration. However, no specific results of the kamikaze UAV development have been reported so far, and it turned out that the integration of destruction means was about aerial bombs of the World War II period.

On May 22, Lukashenko visited TSP Design Bureau, where he was shown promising prototypes of domestically developed missile weapons. It was officially acknowledged for the first time that the country was assembling Chinese missiles for the Polonez system instead of making its own ones. Belarus was developing a missile with a range of 300 km. The industry was tasked to substitute imported expensive components and units, such as warheads, explosives and fuels with domestically-made analogues, which is currently at the initial stage.

Meanwhile, China has actually refused to provide the required technologies, and Russia refuses to provide its testing grounds to Belarus, largely because Beijing and Moscow do not want to help Minsk become a competitor in the arms market.

On the whole, 2020 was a year of challenges for the national defense industry. The financial standing of defense enterprises further deteriorated. When explaining this, officials pointed at the coronavirus epidemic that caused foreign customers and component suppliers to suspend operations. Some other problems were also acknowledged, in particular, difficulties with exports of products and services, growth of overdue accounts payable and receivable, indebtedness under loans, increasing understaffing, and wage payment delays.

Not all R&D entities supervised by the State Military-Industrial Committee reported promising developments. Their cooperation with manufacturers of military equipment leaves much to be desired. Wages paid from bank loans have increased more than threefold.

The State Military-Industrial Committee declined to provide the 2020 export statistics, which suggests that exports, including those to Russia, have decreased. This is evidenced by the poorer financial performance of some enterprises that almost entirely focus on Russian customers. Defense exports to Russia have been showing a decrease for years now.

COVID-19 impacts

Despite the bravado of official propaganda, the COVID-19 pandemic directly affects the law enforcement and defense agencies. Some combat training events that involved the recalling of reservists were cancelled. The targets set for international defense cooperation, particularly with the Collective Security Treaty Organization members, were not fully achieved. The plan of cooperation with Russia was only implemented by around 70%.

The autumn conscription was extended until January 1, 2021. Reportedly, there was not enough time for all conscripts to pass medical tests, because many medical centers were reassigned to combat COVID-19, and a large number of draft-age persons contracted the coronavirus and were unavailable.

The statistics on the COVID-19 incidence rate in the army were not published. The Interior Ministry reported in April 2020 that at least 1% of personnel was infected. Judging by the quarantine measures taken by the armed forces, the situation in the army was no better. The military faced a shortage of personal protection equipment. A high coronavirus incidence rate at defense enterprises was registered.

Personnel reshuffles

The year 2020 was unprecedented in terms of the scale of personnel changes in the defense and security bloc. The heads of the State Control Committee, KGB, Interior Ministry, Military-Industrial Committee, Security Council, Defense Ministry, and General Staff of the Armed Forces were replaced (the latter three in January 2020).

In February, Alexander Lukashenko appointed the new KGB chief and the interior minister. General Sergei Terebov took the office of first deputy chairman of the KGB. By virtue of his position, he is in charge of investigation in political cases and monitoring of the loyalty of civil and military officials. Colonel Gennady Kazakevich was appointed first deputy interior minister, chief of criminal police.

The appointees made several statements. Terebov said that the KGB needed to be reinforced “to prevent external destructive influence on Belarus”; Kazakevich named the fight against corruption and extremism as priorities of his ministry. The commitment to counter extremism and destructive influence meant the direct instruction to be ready for political repressions.

On June 4, Lukashenko appointed a new government headed by Roman Golovchenko (previously the State Military-Industrial Committee director). His deputy in the Committee Dmitry Pantus took over from him.

On September 3, Lukashenko transferred KGB chief Valery Vakulchik to the position of state secretary of the Security Council. However, as soon as October, Vakulchik, Interior Minister Yuri Karayev and his deputy Alexander Barsukov were appointed to the regions to keep the situation there under control.

In autumn, Chief of Minsk Police Ivan Kubrakov was appointed interior minister. Introducing him to the ministry leadership on October 30, Lukashenko said that:

• the new appointments of the generals were part of the reorganization of the management system through the placement of security officers on senior positions to perform the monitoring and staffing functions in the state machinery;
• the main task was to ensure suppression of dissidence and to achieve unquestioning obedience of civil servants;
• the protests were a rebellion, so the authorities would not handle the opponents led by blue collars and students with kid gloves.

Lukashenko also asked the police not to betray him, and warned that wars begin with internal destabilization.6

On November 19, Lukashenko appointed Interior Ministry’s Troops Commander Yuri Nazarenko first deputy minister of the interior, chief of public security police. His previous position was given to Nikolai Karpenkov, who is known for his involvement in the violent crackdown on protesters in Minsk.

Stake on force

It did not come as a surprise that Alexander Lukashenko chose a violent scenario to stay in power. On the other hand, the large-scale involvement of the army in suppressing popular protests was a surprise, although the Belarusian ruler did not conceal this plan. During the meetings with voters as part of the 2020 election campaign, he actually only met with special operations forces of the army and the police. He said then that:

• Belarus should produce weapons and ammunition domestically as much as possible;
• the spending on the army will largely depend on the economic situation in the country;
• one of the tasks set to the army is to maintain stability and harmony in society;
• a war might be caused by internal political instability.7

Secretary of State of the Security Council Andrei Ravkov, who was accompanying Lukashenko, assured that the army was strongly committed to stand ready for any development. Being a tool of force of the state, it can be applied in an internal political crisis to “prevent the state from collapsing or from bloodshed among civilians.”

During his pre-election meetings with the military, Lukashenko said that the 5th special operations brigade and the 120th infantry brigade were trained, among other things, to suppress protests.

Later, as the regime failed to extinguish protests right away, it started to demonstratively place army units in front of the protesters.8 In order to discredit the protests and divert attention from their cause, the authorities made numerous allegations that the collective West in various combinations (the United States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Ukraine, NATO, and the European Union as a whole) unleashed a hybrid war against Belarus, with internal protests accompanied by NATO’s external pressure.

As far as we know, allegations that Poland planned to annex a part of the Belarusian territory have been actively used in the official narrative to indoctrinate the military. The idea was implanted that the army was fighting not against rebels, but separatists who wanted to compromise the integrity of the country, as was done, for instance, in Ukraine’s Donbass region.

Conclusion

The aggressive and unsubstantiated statements made by the Belarusian regime against the West in general and Poland in particular, as well as the massive repression inside the country, have led to a virtual collapse of regional security dialogue. External observers had the impression that the Belarusian regime exchanged its international security independence for the Kremlin’s support.

The Belarusian defense industry has hit the ceiling of its capabilities. Since the sources of investment are few, stagnation is the most probable scenario, and not the worst one for the industry in the years to come. Missile weapons development is a project of strategic importance from the point of view of both meeting the needs of the national armed forces and boosting defense exports.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed the inability of the country’s leadership to respond promptly to emerging challenges.

The role of the coercive component in the Belarusian political system will increase, because it is the only tool to preserve the ruling elite in the current situation. Alexander Lukashenko’s reliance on law enforcement and defense agencies was evident even at the beginning of the electoral campaign in 2020. It is unlikely that the Belarusian ruler regarded it as a new norm, but rather hoped for a short-term empowerment of the agencies and the regime’s ability to quickly overcome the political crisis.