Meeting in Shklov to discuss territorial defense

Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko hosted a meeting in Shklov to discuss territorial defense.

The head of state arrived at the Shklov District Executive Committee where he was greeted by Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin, State Secretary of the Security Council Aleksandr Volfovich, as well as representatives of the local authorities. During a brief conversation preceding the meeting, the head of state gave the go-ahead for the appointment of Deputy Chairman of the Gorki District Executive Committee Andrei Kamko as Head of the Shklov District Executive Committee.

“All those present here understand how relevant it is today to discuss national security matters,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed. According to the President, the level of training of local administration is of particular importance for territorial defense. “Throughout last year, we experienced first-hand how destructive information, economic and political pressure from the West influenced the worldview of our people and pushed some of them to actually betray their own people. It is always necessary to produce such a response that will be remembered by the enemy for many years. And only nationwide defense is capable of such a response. In other words, we all need to rise up if we want to defend our land,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

“The decision, taken 20 years ago, to establish territorial defense forces has proved right. The project was large-scale and quite expensive. I had my concerns about the viability of this decision. Today, we can see that we did the right thing. We needed to do this,” said Aleksandr Lukashenko.

According to the President, uniting local authorities with the population strengthens the country's ability to counter external and internal threats. “We have done a lot to develop territorial defense. The military report to me that a lot has been done to improve the ways of carrying out different tasks, ensure coordination of actions of various enforcement structures, improve the efficiency and sustainability of the territorial defense management system. Officials, from governors to commanders and privates of territorial troops, undergo necessary training,” the head of state said.

The work is underway to ensure the availability of weapons, hardware and material resources for the needs of territorial defense of cities and regions. “The weapons we have are in good condition in general. We just need to conduct an overall review (which we will be doing during this and next year),” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed. Important economic and social facilities are also getting ready to repulse any kinds of attacks, he added.

The President recalled that at the beginning of the week he inspected enterprises producing small arms and ammunition. Their establishment was prompted by the need to improve the material and technical infrastructure of the territorial defense forces. “In the event of a conflict, each neighborhood, each house, each head of the household, at least, should be able to defend their families, themselves and, of course,  the land, the territory where they live. This will be nationwide defense,” the head of state said.

According to the President, the level of training of local administration is of particular importance for territorial defense. “The overall success of territorial defense depends on how well executives in local governments know the state of things with the training of their subordinates, as well as the tasks and ways to fulfill them. The General Staff, people in charge of the army and the country will help you, we will send you the military that will establish the necessary communication and help you manage the territorial defense troops. We will send one or two people, most likely, even a controller. Heads of district and regional executive committees also need to learn how to fight,” the head of state said.

Districts must also ensure rapid mobilization of citizens. "You should know where people are and mobilize them not within five or six months but within 24 hours," the Belarusian leader noted.

The head of state also touched on the issue of vehicle provision during the mobilization. "All enterprises, where vehicles are concentrated in peacetime, should know that they are subject to mobilization," he said.

"In short, at any moment you must be able to raise alarm and mobilize people within three days, to guard those objects that need to be protected,” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted. "Everyone in the country should be preparing for this after today's meeting. One of the goals of the meeting is to give a signal to each zone (we have seven of them), each district to be ready to mobilize during the period designated by the President."

The President said that several years ago he received a proposal to put military commissariats under the command of the local authorities. Then the head of state did not accept the proposal in order to preserve the well-functioning system. “The most important thing here is not just to align local military commissariats with the Defense Ministry, but also to ensure the management of the country, local authorities, heads of city halls and oblast executive committees. At the time I was afraid of making things worse with this reorganization. This issue, however, is still on the table, and we can keep on looking into it. If there are reasonable and convincing proposals on reorganization of the military system, we can consider them. The current system, however, has worked quite well so far,” the head of state explained.