MINSK, 7 April (BelTA) – By preserving its mines, Belarus made a huge headway into the future and saved its own money. Chairman of the Human Rights, National Relations, and Mass Media Commission of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly, Doctor of Military Sciences, Professor Nikolai Buzin made the relevant statement in a new episode of BelTA’s YouTube project V Teme [On Point].
Nikolai Buzin said: “Huge amounts of mines are used on battlefields in Ukraine, Africa, Afghanistan, and the Middle East these days. The relevant conventions that were signed back in the day are not getting fulfilled. The very system of checks and balances does not work. Huge amounts of cluster munitions and various kinds of mines are employed.”
The expert noted that Belarus had managed to preserve a significant part of its mine stockpile after the collapse of the Soviet Union. If Belarus had not done that, it would have either to buy the mines or make them domestically at a huge expense to the state budget.
“Any weapons cost a lot of money. By making the right decision not to destroy these stockpiles, we made huge headway into the future,” Nikolai Buzin stressed. “We preserved our own finance. Besides, we managed not to overheat our own economy and we acquired some potential that we can realize today. Including by protecting the most important areas by laying mines the way Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia are doing. But they have to buy their own mines.”
He added that meanwhile Belarus has its own stockpiles: “This is the difference between Belarus’ approaches and approaches of those, who rush to accomplish tasks of the West and do its bidding.”
