MINSK, March 7 President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said he believes sabotage at the airport near Minsk and a terrorist attack in the Bryansk region by links of one chain.
«Everything was designed for the media. And everything was linked like links of one chain — we have a terrorist attack in Machulishchi, and in the Bryansk region, when «A reconnaissance group from the territory of Ukraine — about 40, or maybe more, bastards — came in, shot civilians, wounded a child. These were links in the same chain. To demonstrate to the West what they (Kyiv — ed.) are still capable of. Money is And our fugitives (Belarusian opposition — ed.) expected to receive funding for this,» Belta quoted Lukashenka as saying.
Lukashenka stressed that the actions to undermine the plane had no military significance. «Even if something happened to this aircraft, it is not the only one,» the president explained.
Earlier on Tuesday, Lukashenka announced the arrest of a «terrorist of the Ukrainian special services and his accomplices» who were involved in an attempt to sabotage a Russian AWACS A-50 aircraft at an airfield near Minsk in late February. He said that a Russian recruited by Kiev, who lived in Crimea and also had a Ukrainian passport, was involved in the sabotage attempt. According to the president, the saboteur was trained by representatives of the SBU, the highest technologies were used. Lukashenko said that drones were used in the preparation of the sabotage. The Belarusian president said that as a result of the sabotage, the A-50 aircraft was not seriously damaged, but Minsk asked the Russian Federation to replace the aircraft.
On Thursday, March 2, a sabotage and reconnaissance group penetrated the territory of the villages of Lubechane and Sushany of the Klimovsky district from Ukraine. According to official figures, she fired at at least two cars, killing the drivers. One of them was Leonid Golovanov, who was taking children — a 10-year-old boy and two girls — to a school bus in a nearby village. The boy was able to get out and save the girls, although he himself was injured. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident a terrorist attack. The security forces carried out measures to destroy the armed Ukrainian nationalists who had penetrated into the region, on Thursday evening the FSB reported that the saboteurs had been squeezed out into Ukraine, where they were hit by a massive artillery strike.