Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, during a decoration ceremony for high-ranking officers, declared that his security forces had arrested the perpetrator (and 20 of his accomplices) of the February 26th drone attack on the Russian A-50 airborne early warning and airborne control (AEW&C) aircraft at Machulyshche airbase.
This contradicts initial reports by organizations opposed to the current Belarusian government, which claimed that the attack had been carried out by a Belarusian partisan cell, and that its members had been successfully evacuated to neighboring countries.
According to the Belarusian news site BELTA, Lukashenko said that the «terrorist» had been trained in Ukraine by local intelligence elements and by the U.S. CIA. He also commented that the drone used was a small commercial model.
“They chose a small drone. If they had chosen a large drone, our tracking systems would surely have detected it,» Lukashenko said..
He then added that the drones used, manufactured in China and present in commercial stores everywhere, were purchased in the U.S. and then transferred to Ukraine, where the person in charge of carrying out the attack and his accomplices would have received the necessary training for their use against the Russian A-50U.
Ще одне відео дрона та А-50У в Мачуліщахhttps://t.co/868XBBbQZE pic.twitter.com/kaD11ivwr1
— MilitaryAviationInUa (@Ukraine_AF) March 3, 2023
How serious were the damages inflicted?
Contrary to what was claimed at the time by the Belarusian organization BYPOL (opposed to President Lukashenko’s government), which maintained that the damage to the Russian AEW aircraft had been severe and as a result had rendered it inoperative, Lukashenko presented another version:
“Fortunately, the aircraft was not significantly damaged except for, I am told, scratches and one hole in the body, which does not prevent the military aircraft from doing its job. We’ve demonstrated this aircraft to you. I am told it even welcomed the president on my flight back from Beijing. Nevertheless, we asked Russians to take this aircraft for maintenance and send us another one. So they did”.
Satellite images released the next day of the attack by several commercial Earth observation companies seem to confirm the Belarusian head of state’s assertions about the limited extent of the damage. But as Lukashenko himself admits, the attack was successful and the aircraft had to be sent to Russia for repair.
