Alyaksandr Lukashenka's press secretary, Natalia Eismont, has commented on the origin of his electric Tesla for the DW.
A week ago, the Belarusian leader said that the car had been presented to him by the head of the Tesla company. Later, Elon Musk refuted these words in social networks ("Uh, no").
Eismont's answer to the question about the Tesla in the fleet of the Belarusian ruler was brief: "From the factory".
Lukashenka's spokesperson was unable to say who drives the electric car: "I know for a fact that Alyaksandr Ryhoravich regularly tests it for speed. And once he even partially dismantled it to see how it works; how the battery is attached to the bottom, and so on".
Itt became known that the Belarusian leader owns a Tesla in 2017. Then Lukashenka tested the S P100D model for his birthday for the first time. Immediately after that, he told reporters that he had accelerated it up to 280 km/h (although the maximum speed of this car was 250 km/h).
At the time, there were suggestions that the car was presented to the head of Belarus by a Russian businessman Mikhail Gutseriyev -- on the test drive day they had an official meeting.
However, Natallia Eismont refutes this information. According to her, Gutseriyev only wanted to present Lukashenka with a Tesla "but the president refused, because he had already had such a car - the same one he test drove."