Negligent agricultural workers sent to the army by Aliaksandr Lukashenka have reformed during their military service. Now Belarusian Defense Minister Viktar Khrenin wants to reward them. Lukashenka said this at a meeting today devoted to agricultural production in Belarus.
At the beginning of the month, Lukashenka ordered negligent workers in Belarus’s agricultural sector to be sent to the army for military training. Following his order, military commissars went to farms. As a result, according to Lukashenka himself, about 500 people were drafted into the army and formed into battalion tactical groups.
Today, he shared the results of this military re-education.
“Let me give you an example. Some people took it like this — ‘hee-hee, ha-ha’ — when I said at the conference call: the negligent ones, alcoholics and others who don’t want to work the land during the harvest — to the ‘front.’ To the army, to the special operations forces, to the border — to Krupko and Parkhomchyk, Khrenin is responsible,” he said.
According to him, he has repeatedly asked the defense minister how the rural workers were coping with military service. The minister replied that there were no issues with them.
“I didn’t believe him. I said: ‘Check again, see for yourself.’ I asked again a week later. He told me: ‘Aliaksandr Ryhoravich, let me reward them.’ I said: ‘Have you gone crazy? These are alcoholics, all sorts of people…’ Their faces are bright, they work, they do everything the officer tells them. No complaints whatsoever.
“And they say the army is not a camp for re-education, as Valfovich said. Yes, it is not a camp. But it is a very good school for re-education. Normal men. They have been retrained. I said: ‘Give everyone weapons, like military personnel. Change their clothes, shave them, give them haircuts. And send them there.’ They carried out combat coordination, everything was done according to the latest standards. Mobile groups, tactical groups. Everything we need to protect the border. We are not fighting in Ukraine, but we need to protect the border. And we sent 170 people there immediately,” he said.
Lukashenka added that in the field, those drafted had equipped dugouts better than they had furnished apartments.
“They dugouts better than they furnished apartments in Minsk. There you have it — alcoholics, all sorts of people,” he said.
“We were unable to organize them. But in the army, Khrenin and his officers organized their work and are asking to reward them. I say: ‘Let’s start with you rewarding them, I have no objection.’ He will reward some of the best people there. So, people can work,” Lukashenka concluded, saying that “there are certain methods and levers of influence on those who do not want to properly perform their work duties.”
