Teddy Bears Didn’t Expect This

Swedish PR-agency Studio Total performed a brilliant by its media buzz action. However, Swedes were unlikely to predict such consequences. Not familiar with the temper of Minsk, it is doubtful they expected new regime’s hostages and new diplomatic crisis caused by their innocuous stunt.

Air Defence has nothing to do with this

If the Swedish plane was forced to land, the pilots would have faced a court trial and imprisonment. Why all happened a different way?

Some analysts, particularly Andrei Suzdaltsev from Moscow, hastened defaming Belarusian Air Defence Forces saying if it’s not able to detect an aviette, then how can it be reliable? Such an opinion was gladly picked up by Belarusian and foreign mass media.

However, the violation of Belarusian air space by a light aircraft is not an indicator of real fighting capacity of Belarus’ Air Defence.

Air Defence is aimed to protect the air space from armed flying objects, but not from single sports aircrafts. Thus, interception or extermination of a air space violator is performed after an object is recognized a dangerous battle unit. At peace time, all radars are set to detect battle units at the highest possible altitude. In spite of this, performance characteristics of Belarusian radars allow them to detect such objects as that Swedish plane. However, tracing such objects is not their chief task.

Air Defence may perform total scanning 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but it would be super waste of resources.

Probably no country (except, might be, Israel) have solid all-embracing radar coverage of altitudes lower than 150–200 meters all around the country. Thus, the ‘bear bombing’ was not a real test of Air Defence capacity.

Information didn’t reach the top?

So why did Swedish plane manage to reach Minsk and then fly back until it landed in Lithuania? There are three possible versions.

1. The plane was not detected by a tracking system, and an interception group was not sent, and the administration learned about the incident from the Internet.

2. The aircraft was detected, the information ‘went up’, but the head of the state decided to do nothing with the border violators.

3. The aircraft was detected by the Air Defence Forces, but the information was not passed to the persons in charge for interception or liquidation of a violator.

The first version seems much possible as such objects like the Swedish aircraft are hard to identify by the Air Defence radars set to detect other type of aims.

This version may also be proved by other cases of air space violations by a light aircrafts. Thus, a Lithuanian plane got lost and was accidentally noticed by a pilot of SU-25 who was flying along the border in 2006. Earlier, in 2003, a Lithuanian light plane was found. It turned out the plane had crashed several months before it was found as Belarusian Air Defence did not detected the aircraft.

However, this version contradicts Aliaksandr Lukashenka words who said the plane had been detected by radars. It also contradicts the evidences by the very Swedish pilots who told they were contacted by the Minsk-1 Airport traffic controller.

In any event, the plane was detected. Still, it is unclear why fighters weren’t sent to the aircraft when the Swedes had not responded to the air traffic controller. In such a situation, air traffic controllers are obliged to contact Air Defence to clarify origin of an aircraft.

All this makes it possible for us to deny the second version even in spite of its’ being the official one.

The initial refusal to recognize the incident by the authorities and hasty personnel decisions as the outcome of internal showdown within the military bodies and, correspondently, admitting their guilt contradicts the second version. It also does not fit the logic of propaganda: the violation of Belarus’ air space after a posh parade which showed all the military might destroys the propagandistic effect and ruins the image of the military. Vice versa, forcing the aircraft to land and organizing a celebrated court trial would have been more appropriate. It is also hard to believe that in this case Lukashenka was guided by the “humanity principles”.

Thereby, the third version becomes the most credible one. It explains both denying the incident and rapid punishment of the administration of the State Customs Committee and the Air Defence Forces.

Why? It is plausible that the radars detected and traced the object automatically, not recognizing it to be a battle unit and thus not dangerous. The information might have been passed to an orderly officer, but didn’t reach the main recipients.

System error

The rapidity and significance of the personnel reshuffle (mind that the head of the State Customs Committee Ihar Rachkouski was close to Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s older son) is the evidence of state decision making system error: it brought negative political consequences. In other words, the ‘teddy bear incident’ undisclosed the inefficiency of the chain decision making and the president probably receives not complete information on what is going on in the country. Under some circumstances, it may bring fatal outcome for the whole system and its ruler. Here the harsh and asymmetric reaction of Lukashenka is rooted.

Row with Sweden: why Minsk chooses aggravation?

To all appearance, the bear drop and the recall of the diplomatic missions are not interconnected.

However, both situations amplified each other’s media effect resulting into a great scandal.

First of all, Minsk feels itself the right party of the diplomatic row.

Secondly, the row may be a good chance to evict this hazardous — as Minsk thinks — Swedish embassy which has been a very vivid contributor to Belarusian civil society.

Thirdly, Minsk is not afraid of open diplomatic conflict as it knows how and when the conflict may be stopped.

Even if the other EU embassies join the row. The ‘diplomatic war’ of the spring, 2012, was rich in lessons: the EU member states are not interested to keep their ambassadors outside Belarus; several released political prisoners — and all will resume its normal course (and Minsk have enough political prisoners now); political conflicts with the EU do not bring serious economic effects.

Fourthly, Minsk is not afraid of political image worsening after the presidential elections of 2010 and the diplomatic conflict of 2012: it can’t become any more worse.

And the last point: Belarusian authorities still feel economic and political support of Moscow.

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