Belarus faces serious USA and EU sanctions in the case of new shipments of Russian weapons to Syria.
The opinion came from a military observer Aliaksandr Aliesin as he commented for the charter97.org web-site on Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s suggestion to ship arms to Syria via Belarus.
"First of all I want to say that from the political, economic and international image point of view Belarus will not get any dividends from that. I think this is a knowingly dead-end option, because there is attention on Syria and the use of chemical weapon could have probably taken place there. Apart from that there is the opposition of world’s leading countries to Russia. That is why, of course, Belarus will face huge economic sanctions. Even if these are not universal UN sanctions, but these will be US sanctions, EU sanctions and, of course, the current economic situation will prevent the Belarusian leadership from taken such options", - the expert is convinced.
He highlighted that before, when all that was done secretly, without the attention of world public, there were almost no consequences for official Minsk, but now the whole world is following the situation in Syria.
"Apart from that, it is also a challenge to get these weapons to Syria, because sea, air and land area is under the observation of the USA, Turkey and Israel. Even if Belarus agrees to deliver the weapons, I cannot imagine, how this can be done. This is why I think it was Zhirinovsky’s PR move, since he has not been heard for a long time. He often says something without thinking of the real circumstances", - the military observer believes.
He also noted that earlier Belarus used to ship arms surplus to Syria quite extensively.
"Russia was the main supplier. As to Belarus, its main shipment was the 33 units of fighter-bomber jets MiG-23BM equipped with an on-board armory set. Although they were shipped before the conflict has got so violent, according to the media, these jets are used against the opposition. When it became politically disadvantageous for Belarus, and even more so hard to carry out technically, our country stopped the shipments. Although the fighting Syria is a good client for selling the surplus of Belarusian arms to. The regimes on the sharp edge are not very picky and buy any weapon without bargaining", - Aliaksandr Aliesin summarized.
We would remind that the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky claimed that weapons should be shipped to Syria via Belarus and Iran. Experts from our country and abroad alike used to repeatedly claim that official Minsk sold weapons to Damascus.
