MINSK, November 11 (Itar-Tass) — Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko says the military-technical cooperation with Russia is productive.
“We have positive military-technical cooperation with Russia, which is aimed at improvement of defence potential of the Union State in the East-European region of collective security,” he said during a report from Defense Minister Yuri Zhadobin about service results of the armed forces in 2011.
Lukashenko spoke about successful exercises with Russia called Union Shield 2011.
“They have proven once again the firm alliance relations between Belarus and Russia,” he said. “The main importance of the exercises is that Belarus’ five thousand military being thousands of kilometres away from their country have demonstrated a high level of training and organisation.”
“It proves clearly that we have a truly efficient army, which is capable of protecting our people,” Lukashenko said. “We should be proud of it.”
Speaking about Belarus’ armed forces, he said that he considers them to be a major factor of deterring outside threats, and that of stability in the country.
“I would like to hope, and I believe in it, that the Belarusian armed forces will cope with this task,” he said.
Lukashenko stressed that the country has clear priorities of its foreign policy, which should retain various directions towards peace and stability.
“The defense component of the national security is in the state adequate to current challenges,” he said. Events of the current year have proven once again that “certain super nations still focus their policies on military force.”
“It worries us now on the background of the world financial crisis as our task is clear – not to let in any way lowering of our military security,” the president said.
He stressed that in the coming year, the country should pay special attention to practical teaching modern means of armed fighting.
“By no means we should calm down ourselves and be satisfied by having planes, helicopters and tanks,” he said. “You can see today that these planes, tanks and the rest may be of no use at modern wars, we can see it in the bitter experience of other countries.”
“Nowadays, rockets solve basic tasks, and we should defend ourselves from enemies’ rockets, and we should work out different forms of combat based on our conditions, our experience and our mentality,” Lukashenko said.