Russia has not produced S-500 Prometey vehicle?

Russia's latest S-500 air defense missile system can be installed on a heavy wheeled chassis of the Minsk wheeled tractor plant.

US and Western sanctions are one of the reasons forcing Russia to use technology from the Belarusian defense industry.

Before this information, many experts said that this could be a move to strengthen relations between Russia and Belarus.

Previously, at the end of May, Russia successfully secretly tested its latest air defense missile system, the S-500 “Prometey”.

This source also revealed that in the recent test, the S-500 system destroyed an aerial target at a distance of nearly 481 km, 81 km more than previous tests.

Satellite images of the convoy of trucks with the 40N6M long-range missiles of the S-500 air defense missile system allowed observers to determine that this chassis is an MZKT-79291 (12x12 type) produced by the Minsk wheeled machine factory.

The Russian government has previously announced that it will produce domestic goods to replace imports. Under this policy, components of Ukrainian and Belarusian military equipment and weapons can be replaced.

Therefore, the fact that Russia uses Minsk vehicles to equip the most advanced system in the world has surprised many experts. Especially in recent years, Moscow's trust in Minsk has been decreasing due to their foreign policy. Moreover, the fact that Belarusian leaders do not want Moscow to gradually own their technology and defense enterprises.

Recall that the agreement on the creation of a Russian-Belarusian joint venture with the production of MZKT was reached on March 11, 2013 during a meeting of Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko.

However, Belarus later did not want to reduce the price, estimating MZKT at several billion USD, and Russia later announced that they had started producing special vehicles MZKT to supply the army like Belarus.

In April 2016, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced the order for special heavy-duty wheeled military vehicles developed by Kamaz.

However, the fact that the S-500 uses Belarusian vehicles shows that Russia cannot replace all of the MZKTs supplied by Minsk to the Russian army and they are forced to buy at high prices to test the S-500.

The S-500 air defense missile system is considered the most modern system in the world.

According to published sources, this mobile air defense missile system is capable of intercepting targets flying at low to near-space altitudes, including aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles (including hypersonic), as well as separate combat units, space vehicles and low-Earth orbit vehicles.