Belarus in Libyan conflict

• Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): 15 February 2011 an Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft left a military base near the Belarussian city of Baranovichi and landed at the Libyan desert airport of Sebha. The Ilyushin came from a dedicated military base that only handles stockpiled weaponry and military equipment.[5]
• Western media: At the end of February, it was announced that mercenaries and volunteers from Eastern European countries (Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus) were involved in suppressing anti-government protests.[6]
• Komsomolskaya Pravda: Several hundred military advisers and specialists from Belarus are helping Muammar Gaddafi's army. Foreigners contributed to an increased the mobility of troops, introduced elements of guerrilla warfare into tactics and supported a counteroffensive in late March and early April on the eastern front.[7]
• Ibrahim Abdel Meguid: In the summer, Gaddafi called for the help of Belarusian snipers. A new group of foreign mercenaries arrived via Tunisia.[8]

Initially, reports of military assistance from Belarus were attributed to the results of the information war and the delay in the process of overthrowing the Gaddafi regime was unexpected for the Western community. Deputy Director of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis Alexander Khramchikhin noted a weak evidence base. Sergey Balmasov, an expert at the Institute of the Middle East and the Russian Council on International Affairs, said that all accusations of cooperation between Minsk and Tripoli were based on unsubstantiated allegations by SIPRI Director Hugh Griffiths.[9]

Belarusian military analyst Alexander Alesin on the supply of weapons and the flight of the Belarusian plane to Sebha stated that sending any weapons to the country is impractical, since the Armed Forces of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was well provided for at that time. A much greater need was represented by military specialists and repairmen who would support the combat capability of equipment and its repair.[10] According to the expert, retired military personnel formed the basis of the contingent of Belarusian military specialists in Libya, since officially the state tries not to send active army personnel to «hot spots». The Belarusian army, as Alesin noted, was reduced more than once (especially in the 1990s), many contract soldiers left because of low salaries. Some of the dismissed went to mercenaries. The expert estimated the number of Belarusians in Libya from several dozen to several hundred people.Perhaps they are pilots, maintenance specialists of technical aviation and military equipment, staff officers and special operations specialists — for example, snipers. According to the observer, some may have already participated in other conflicts on the territory of the Africa.[11]

The country's Foreign Ministry, represented by press secretary Andrei Savinykh, has stated three times during all this time that there are no mercenaries or military personnel from Belarus in Libya.[12][13][14] At the same time, the authorities denied even the possibility of «mercenary adventurers» participating in hostilities. This was reported by the Assistant Minister of Defense for Military Policy, Major General Alexander Anisimov.[15] Defense Minister Yuri Zhadobin also spoke to refute the country's involvement in the conflict.[16]

However, on April 6, 2011, there was somewhat different information. As the adviser of the Embassy of Belarus in Tripoli, Georgy Gromyko, said, before the Civil War and foreign intervention, there was a contingent of 500 Belarusian military advisers, instructors and specialists in the country, but with the outbreak of hostilities, some of them were evacuated. However, according to military attache Igor Kachugin, the military was not officially sent to the country. Nevertheless, he did not rule out that someone could have signed individual contracts with Libyan law enforcement agencies.[7]

On the same day, the military department and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a denial of the presence of Belarusians in Libya.[7]

In August and September 2011, Libyan militants detained four Belarusians (Valery Gordienko, Igor Yedimichev, Fyodor Trufanov[17] and Vyacheslav Kachura). They were accused of collaborating with the Gaddafi regime and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The first three were released in 2014. Kachur was released in 2018 with the assistance of Ramzan Kadyrov and Lev Dengov. They also released two Belarusian doctors (Inna Babush and Sergey Zdota) from Libyan captivity in 2017.[18]

According to the UN, 15 flights were made from Belarus to Tripoli Airport in the period from 2013 to 2014. These flights were able to transfer more than 3,000 tons of ammunition for the needs of the Libyan National Army (LNA) Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, controlled by the House of Representatives in Tobruk.[19]

In 2015–2017, as Yevgeny Satanovsky wrote from the newspaper «Военно-промышленный курьер», the charter company Ruby Star Airlines, affiliated with the Belarusian defense export agency Beltechexport, supplied weapons to the Gadames airport controlled by the Zintan brigade, which during this time was an ally of the LNA.[20]

In May 2020, the media announced the delivery of MiG-29 fighters and Mi-24 helicopters from Belarus to the LNA.[21]

In 2020, supporters of the opposing sides staged a fight for control of the embassy in Minsk.