MINSK. April 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko is not satisfied with the fact that the Armed Forces provide poor maintenance to materiel, and believes that the state cannot spend more assets on defense.
"Belarus cannot afford spending more assets on defense than at the present time," Lukashenko said at a meeting on combat readiness and the state of arms and materiel in the Belarussian Armed Forces, held on Thursday.
"We have to be sure that each penny is spent on what it is intended for with the maximum efficiency," he emphasized.
In this light he noted that the state of arms and materiel had meticulously been inspected in every unit on his orders. "The conclusions, drawn by the commission, resulted in my decision to test a number of units by scrambling them on alarm, and conducting the whole set of combat teamwork training," Lukashenko said.
"I am not satisfied with the state of combat materiel storage facilities. For instance, the fact that expensive combat vehicles rust away in the open is nothing but an example of outrageous mismanagement. One of my major principles consists in punishing mismanagement," he underlined.
In addition to that, Lukashenko pointed out that he was especially worried about failures of military materiel. "Can you imagine what it might result in in a combat environment?" he stressed.
According to the president, the Armed Forces were not the only establishment responsible for maintaining a high level of combat readiness. "It is the priority for all state bodies," he underlined.