Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on May 10 that Moscow had agreed to help Minsk produce missiles, including one similar to Russia’s Iskander, the state-run Belta news agency reported. “In my presence, the president [Vladimir Putin] instructed [head of Russia’s Roscosmos state space corporation] Dmitry Rogozin to immediately provide support so that we would not waste time reinventing the wheel, so that we could tap into the experience of the Russian specialists, who made the Iskander missile,” the head of state said at a government conference to discuss this year’s state defense contracts.
According to Lukashenko, he gave the relevant task to the prime minister to develop promising weapons after the latest meeting with Putin in the Far East. “We’d expressly agreed: Putin, Rogozin, Lukashenko, and other people who were there — people who are involved in missile production in Russia were supposed to take a look at our R&D products,” the Belarusian president said. According to him, Belarus is developing a new missile after all.