Does Belarus have a fleet? Belarusian fleet: not a myth, but a reality

The Baltic Sea closest to Belarus is located hundreds of kilometers from the borders of the republic. And yet, those Belarusians who believe that the republic has its own Navy are right. And that's why. For example, in the Russian Northern Fleet, Minsk patronizes the missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov from the operational squadron, the Grodno region takes care of the nuclear submarine Obninsk, and the hero city of Brest and the region cherish “their” small anti-submarine ship of the Kola Flotilla. There are also registered Belarusian warships in the Baltic. According to naval commanders, the assistance to the Russian Navy coming from the fraternal republic is very significant, both in goods and in money.

But Belarusians not only patronize the ships of the Russian Navy, they actually participate in the naval shipbuilding program. As we were informed at the General Staff of the Navy, a number of naval departments ordering equipment and weapons are working very productively with Belarusian enterprises. For obvious reasons, these factories and joint stock companies of Belarus were not named to us. However, it is quite possible to assume that the Belarusian production association Integral supplies microcircuits of medium and high degrees of integration for the latest Russian warships. By the way, this is one of the surviving radio-electronic industry enterprises in the CIS, which survived the difficult conditions of the first years of transition to the market. It is economically beneficial for the Republic to participate in the Russian ocean-going shipbuilding program.

At the end of this August, the largest-scale exercise in the last 20 years was completed. Far East. In addition to the Ministry of Defense, other security forces fought against terrorists, poachers, state border violators. One of the culminating events of the exercise was the launch of a cruise missile strike from a Tu-160 strategic bomber against an intruder ship in the Bering Sea. By the way, it was on this giant plane that Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was in the co-pilot’s seat.

In the early 90s, entire foreign poaching fleets firmly established themselves in the strategically important and richest Far East. Even spawning rivers were blocked so tightly with nets that not only large red fish could not get there, but fry did not swim into Russian waters. The country's economy suffered colossal damage. Now the entire Russian military organization has stood in the way of foreign and, together with them, Russian predators. And this was confirmed in a conversation with a SOYUZ correspondent by the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Fleet Admiral Vladimir KUROEDOV.

The conversation with the commander-in-chief took place in two stages. He directly supervised the exercises and bore enormous responsibility for the maneuvers that unfolded over a vast territory. But he still found time to answer questions from a war correspondent for the SOYUZ newspaper. The first part of the conversation took place at the Ukrainka military airbase. According to the admiral, the exercises should help determine the tasks and place of the Navy in the fight against terrorism in a state of emergency. Only with such exercises can we find out why the most important state of emergency law for the state, adopted back in 2001, does not work. Therefore, the President of the Russian Federation ordered large-scale exercises of our entire military state organization to be held in all regions of Russia.

The second time I managed to talk with the admiral on the boat of the commander of the Pacific Fleet. The boat passed by warships. More recently they performed in Indian Ocean combat training tasks. Admiral Kuroyedov spoke about the Russian shipbuilding naval program.

We need such a fleet, he said, so that we have the ability to protect and defend our interests in any zone of the World Ocean.

And then he seemed to ask himself a rather difficult question: how can such a fleet be built for Russia under the current conditions?

In this strategically important issue, the commander in chief relies on the opinions and conclusions of scientists from Russian Academy sciences, military research centers. According to him, it is necessary to build ships for the near sea zone, and only then start working on ships for the oceans.

Fortunately for us,” Vladimir Ivanovich explained the concept of the expensive shipbuilding program, “the ocean-going ships and submarines left to Russia from the former Navy of the Soviet Union allow our current fleet to solve all the necessary problems for another 15-20 years. There is enough resource. That’s why we are now conducting exercises in the Indian and Atlantic oceans and various seas. This potential is our support.

But with the ships of the near zone, which ensure the deployment of the main forces, the situation is very difficult. Therefore, the lead ships of the near sea zone have now been laid down, but this year the construction of an ocean-going combat ship will begin at one of the Russian shipyards. According to Russian naval doctrine, such ships will now be multi-functional. Russia abandoned the expensive program to create a fleet consisting of a series of identical ships - artillery, anti-submarine, missile. Now ocean-going ships will combine all these qualities.

At the same time, nuclear and diesel submarines will continue to be built for the submarine fleet. However, giant nuclear submarines with a displacement of up to 20 thousand tons will no longer be created. As Admiral Kuroyedov said, the maximum displacement of the submarines will be up to 12 thousand tons. Apparently, this figure is scientifically substantiated and verified as the most optimal. At the same time, the admiral added that he would really not like to lay down such a shipbuilding program that subsequent commanders-in-chief “will redo it and scold Kuroedov, saying that he didn’t finish looking at it, didn’t calculate everything.” After all, the fleet itself is not just a mass of ships with crews located in their bases. First of all, covering the state in strategic directions. For Belarus, these are primarily the Baltic regions, northern seas. From there, cargo is delivered to the republic by sea. And these areas are precisely designed to support and protect the Baltic and Northern fleets. So far, Russian naval power is enough for this, but what will happen in a couple of decades? Admiral Kuroyedov refused to create new aircraft carriers.

“Today and for the next five to seven years, I don’t see any tasks for aircraft carriers,” he said frankly. - For the safety of carrier-based aviation, we have one aircraft carrier. He will live for many more decades. We will not lose schools.

It is likely that the admiral did not mention another important circumstance: in the current economic conditions, the construction of aircraft carriers is very expensive. Investing huge amounts of money in them will hinder the development of other much-needed naval defense programs. And, according to experts, Admiral Kuroyedov this moment chose the most optimal option for the development of the Navy.

Two American submarines secretly observed the exercises at sea from under the water. One was located at Cape Povorotny near Nakhodka, and the other off the coast of Kamchatka. And these submarines were detected in a timely manner by the latest Russian system, which was created over the past two years. Now from Primorye to Anadyr, the entire underwater, surface and air situation for 400 kilometers is visible at the naval command post. Not a single plane or ship will approach our borders undetected. This system was created primarily by the Ministry of Defense with the direct participation of the Ministry of Transport and the State Fisheries Committee. It allows you to quickly manage all law enforcement agencies in a huge region. At the Pacific Fleet command post, those on duty closely monitored the evolution of the American submarine off the coast of Kamchatka. In a few years, this system of issuing the most current information to the military and civilian leadership of Russia will cover the entire country.

And Admiral Kuroyedov spoke about one more new system. So far it only covers the Primorsky and Khabarovsk territories. But in the future it will also spread to the entire country. It was created by the same three ministries and also Roshydromet. It provides hydrometeorological support to the fleet.

The creation of this system, noted Admiral Kuroyedov, is already improving the effectiveness of combat forces by almost 50 percent. By 2005-2006 it will spread to all Russian fleets.

In addition, the fleet has already created satellite video communications. WITH command post The Navy in Moscow can communicate in video mode with any warship or aircraft anywhere in the World Ocean. In a normal conversation, consult with commanders, indicate the most likely course of action in a specific situation. Satellites of any ministries can be involved in it. It is simply impossible to intercept such information, according to experts.

It is worth adding that it is likely that a number of Belarusian enterprises participated in the creation of the latest Russian defense systems. It is possible that Belarusians will already take direct part in the next exercises of the Russian military organization in the Baltic. Aviation and air defense of the republic will reliably cover the Baltic Fleet and its bases.

Incompetence, or rather, blatant incompetence, is fashionable these days. Writers who plagiarize, surveyors who don't know a level from a theodolite, ophthalmologists who can't measure the distance between pupils, secretaries of defense who studied to be philologists, ambassadors sent by the government to a country they can't find on a map, future US presidents who don't know... how many states there are in their country - all these are the most common examples from modern times.

Recently, a supernova lit up in the firmament of career unknowns. In its light, the stars named G. Bush Jr. and B. H. Obama quickly dimmed.

Yes, the two named know and understand little, despite diplomas from prestigious universities and considerable managerial and political experience, but both are prone to fantasies (often wild), which have repeatedly surprised humanity and about which press secretaries then had to make statements: they say, Journalists misinterpreted the words of the head of state.

Jennifer Psaki, our supernova, doesn't need such excuses. She herself was Obama's press secretary, and now represents the State Department - and is aiming to become the White House press secretary. Her main difference from Bush Jr. and Barack Obama is that while the former, right from the psychiatrist’s couch, can assure all of humanity that God commanded him to attack Iraq, the latter announces to congressmen that the car is an American invention, then Jen is not capable of saying anything exciting. . She does not have what Clifford Simak called the power of imagination. And so she can simply flaunt (even, we would say, be proud) of her own ignorance of everything.

And there really is something to be proud of. “I know that I know nothing,” is Jen Psaki’s motto, which she borrowed from her comrade Socrates. She would like to drink more poison, but let's take pity on the young and beautiful woman. And, in the end, J. Orwell’s prediction regarding the United States must come true. “Ignorance is strength,” eh?

Jennifer Psaki (Jennifer Psaki, born 1978) has been involved in politics from a young age - from the age of 23. In 2004, at 26 years old, she was already deputy press secretary for John Kerry's election campaign. It would seem that there is where both experience and competence can come from. But Leo Tolstoy, who, according to Bunin’s calculations, read 14,000 books and dealt with tyrant kings, believed for a reason that the worst people aspire to power. To this we can add that the higher you rise to power, the more stupidity you will see. Today's United States is a brilliant example of this.

Psaki is the public face of the State Department, a figure who personifies the entire American foreign policy and reports on it at frequent briefings to journalists from the world's leading media.

What is Psaki reporting to the world? Why did it come to the point that this lady in Russia was nicknamed “the circus princess”, and Channel One talked about the transfer of the US 6th Fleet “to the shores of Belarus” (sic), since Lukashenko, allegedly according to Psaki, is about to invade the independent Ukraine?

“On the Internet there is already a series of jokes: “As Psaki said.” Such as: “If Belarus invades Ukraine, the US Sixth Fleet will be immediately transferred to the shores of Belarus.” The fact that Belarus has no coasts does not bother the State Department. As Psaki stated..."

Recently, speaking about referendums in Lugansk and Donetsk regions, Jen Psaki explained to the assembled reporters: “Voting methodology is highly suspect, and there are reports of election carousels, pre-filled ballots.” She also spoke about “children’s voting” and “voting for those who are absent.” Associated Press correspondent Matthew Lee asked, "Forgive my ignorance, but what is an election carousel?" He received the answer: “I must admit that I am just reading this text.”

“This text” is the piece of paper from which Psaki spoke. Presumably, a scribble written by some nameless speechwriter, of whom the American administration hires them in batches. “Let others write!” - this slogan, long ago invented by literary blacks, perfectly reflects not just the complete incompetence, but also the inability to think of American politicians.

“I think not, Matt,” the State Department star replied with a smile.

They also asked at the briefing about the market economy in which Russia and Ukraine participate. As you know, the first sells the second gas, but the second does not pay for it. This is an abnormal picture for a market economy. Or does Psaki believe that Russia has no right to demand money for its gas?

“The Russians say that they want to get money for the gas that they have already supplied to Ukraine,” said the aforementioned M. Lee. “You agree that this is the basis of normal commodity-money relations?”

Having tried to avoid a direct answer, but having failed in that fiasco, Psaki said: “Matt, I’ll be happy to look into this issue when I get back to my office.”

But here is a much more interesting statement from Psaki, which was quoted by Channel One:

“We want Ukraine to have additional access to gas volumes if they are needed. As you all know, natural gas is transported via a gas pipeline from Western Europe through Ukraine to Russia..."

As we can see, one of the mottos invented by the brilliant seer Orwell for a gloomy totalitarian future is being successfully implemented by Psaki in 2014. “Ignorance is strength”!

It's time to ask the question: why are these monstrously incompetent individuals running politics in the United States and voicing it without hesitation?

But the fact is that a career is contraindicated for an intelligent person. This is not an assumption, not a hypothesis. This has long been proven by scientists. The phrase “If you are so smart, then why are you so poor?” invented precisely to ridicule the clever people left behind.

Half a century ago, psychologist Edwin E. Ghiselli empirically proved that the most significant results in management are achieved not by people with the highest level of intellectual development, but by those with average intellectual abilities.

Other, more recent studies, usually associated with the so-called human capital theory, have established that wealth does not go hand in hand with intelligence. It turned out that a significant influence on the amount of personal income is primarily exerted by the family-economic background (that is, connections, kinship and family status), as well as the length of study associated with the mentioned “background” (without money to Harvard or the oldest College of William and Mary you won’t bother, and without a degree from a prestigious university they’re unlikely to be allowed into the White House). As for intellectual abilities themselves, these, according to researchers, had the least impact on the amount of individual income.

All this is not a secret behind seven seals; modern managers and economists have been teaching this for a long time. In Russian university textbooks on this topic, you can read, for example, V. I. Vidyapin and co-authors (“Economic Theory”, M.: INFRA-M, 2000) or V. P. Pugachev (“Personnel Management of an Organization”, M .: Aspect-Press, 1999).

So don't be surprised by what Psaki says. Both “background” and “average intellectual abilities” have an impact.

The chief engineer of the port, Grigory Artemchik, told us about the work of the Bobruisk port and the Belarusian shipping company. According to him, the management of the Belarusian river fleet is carried out by the Republican Unitary Enterprise "Belarusian River Shipping Company" with its center in Mozyr. In addition to the port in Bobruisk, it includes seven more river ports: Gomel, Mozyr, Rechitsa, Brest, Pinsk, Mikashevichi and Mogilev. Grigory Artemchik noted that it is the shipping company that coordinates the activities of all ports, depending on what tasks the shipping company faces, uses “this or that watercraft, if it is free, and sends it to any point in Belarus where it can be delivered.”

Thus, the ships of the Bobruisk port, although they work mainly on the Berezina, but in 2008-2010 they worked in the port of Gomel and also reached Turov. Today, one of the Bobruisk dredgers (a vessel designed for dredging and extraction of non-metallic construction materials) operates in the river port of Mogilev.

The main activity of the port of Bobruisk today is the transportation of construction mineral cargo. Basically, this is sand, which is mined from the bottom of the Berezina to ensure navigation on it in the summer. “The dredger loads sand onto non-self-propelled barges, motor ships tow the barges to the port, and then we unload construction sand using portal cranes,” noted the port’s chief engineer.

“To go, for example, to Mikashevichi for crushed stone is very far. You have to go to the Dnieper, go through Ukraine to Pripyat to Mikashevichi - this is a very large circle over a distance of 830 km (while the distance from Mikashevich to Bobruisk by rail is only 300 km Therefore, there are no such transportations at the moment. However, the chief engineer notes that river and railway transport complement each other.

"There are places where Railway does not reach, and we can transport crushed stone and any other cargo there. Shipping was a little forgotten as a mode of transport, but now it is slowly beginning to revive. The Belarusian River Shipping Company begins to work closely with Ukraine: we transport granulated slag, carry out timber transportation, and transport oil products. “This is largely done by the Mozyr river port and adjacent ports,” he says.

“Last year, our ship participated in the transportation of oversized cargo for the Novolukoml and Berezovskaya State District Power Plants. Apparently, this year there will be some deliveries as well. We plan to take part in these transportations along the Berezina River,” said Grigory Artemchik. In the last three years, Bobruisk ships also transported timber for the Svetlogorsk pulp and cardboard mill from the Berezino pier, where timber was harvested.

The port of Bobruisk currently employs 67 people. In operation there are three towing ships, two dredgers, five non-self-propelled barges with a lifting capacity of 1 thousand tons and two non-self-propelled barges with a lifting capacity of 350 tons, two floating reloaders, which are used when working where there are no portal cranes (in Svetlogorsk, Parichi). In total, in 2012 the Bobruisk port had 300 thousand tons of transportation, this year 350-400 thousand tons are expected.

“We work as soon as the ice melts and before freeze-up. Naturally, in the spring, when the waters are high, we can make maximum use of the carrying capacity of our barges. After working in May and June in Bobruisk and accumulating sand for construction organizations in Bobruisk, we will go to work in Svetlogorsk. In In July-September, of course, the loading of ships decreases due to the lack of depth. But since we are constantly deepening the bottom, we try to maintain the volume of transportation during the winter period for fleet repairs, both in the port itself and in the Rechitsa and Gomel shipbuilding areas. -ship repair yards, which were recently joined to the shipping company,” he noted.

In addition, according to Grigory Artemchik, the port is now closely involved in the delivery of construction sand for the needs of individuals. “People come, order, and we load right on the spot without involving third parties. And, thanks to this, we receive additional income,” said the chief engineer.

He also noted that Belarus fully provides itself with personnel for the Belarusian shipping company, as well as ships. Thus, the command staff of the fleet is trained by the Svetlogorsk State Industrial College. People emerge from it as second mates to the captain or commander of the dredger. Gomel State Vocational School of River Fleet No. 30 trains motor mechanics. In addition, senior command personnel are trained there. Engineering and technical personnel are trained by the Belarusian State University of Transport and the Department of Shipbuilding and Hydraulics at BNTU. “The training of all personnel in Belarus has been streamlined,” emphasized Grigory Artemchik

The production of passenger ships is currently carried out by the Pinsk Shipyard. Three passenger ships of his production have recently been operating in Mogilev and Vitebsk. “Previously, the production of thousand-ton barges was carried out by the Rechitsa shipbuilding plant. Tugboats were produced by the Pinsk and Gomel shipbuilding plants, 350-ton barges by the Petrikovsky shipbuilding plant. And there was a shipbuilding plant in Bobruisk, but in 1986 it was combined with the port under the Soviet Union,” - said the chief engineer.

Grigory Artemchik also noted that during the ten years of his work at the port there were no significant incidents. According to him, all problems are being resolved as usual.

At the same time, Alexander Livanovich, a second-generation river captain, on the ship under whose control Telegraph correspondents set sail, said that anything could happen. So, according to him, it had happened many times before that ships were stranded and had their bottoms broken on rocks. In such cases, barges often had to be unloaded, towed, and repaired.

"Once upon a time this was the case. Now everyone is trying to big water transport. As the water begins to fall more, they will be transferred to Svetlogorsk. It won’t be profitable here: the fuel is burned, and there is little cargo to transport. There are places here where there are a lot of stones. If you get a little overloaded, that’s the only way you’ll get through,” the captain noted.

The only woman in the Bobruisk port, the cook on the ship that sheltered us, Anna Maksimova, also had to stand aground, and she treated Telegraph journalists to her dishes. Although, according to her, the saying “it’s unfortunate for a woman on a ship” is not about her. “Once four barges with timber were pulled from Berezino. So we sat aground for six days. It seemed like the shore was close, but there was no way to get out. Being aground, we had to bake bread ourselves and do everything. It was such that we had no water. They got water three kilometers away. Everything was fine,” she said.

According to Nikolaevna, this is her eighth navigation, but her first on this ship. The ship she sailed on earlier has been undergoing repairs in Rechitsa since this year. Nevertheless, she says, the team here is “young and good.” “Everyone especially loves potatoes. Even if you spread them on bread, they will eat potatoes. I bake pies and buns. The river asks for food, so we don’t take the kettle off the stove,” says the cook.

On a tugboat, our route lay from the river port of Bobruisk to Lukova Gora on the very outskirts of the city, where a dredger with a filled river sand by barge. Despite the fact that both the port and Onion Mountain are located in Bobruisk, it took about 2.5 hours to walk against the current along the numerous bends of the Berezina. At Onion Mountain, the ship's crew deftly replaced the empty barge with one filled with sand, and the ship moved towards Return trip. The journey back was not so long and took only 1.5 hours - the current helped. Having delivered the barge to the port, the ship set off again, albeit without journalists.

Maxim Gatsak. Photo by Nadezhda Gatsak

Our country has something to sell on world markets (including those that lie overseas): equipment, metal, fertilizers, building materials, petroleum products... For this we need a fleet. Belarusian Shipping Company, Belarusian Forwarding and Freight Company, Belarusian Shipping Company - judging by these big names, you might think that we live in a serious maritime power. We'll have to disappoint. On the seas we have neither a shipping company nor a fleet. It would be nice if there was potential and serious intentions hidden behind the pretentious names. Alas, even ambitions are not visible, that is, thoughtful, calculated plans to conquer the seas and oceans on ships flying the Belarusian flag and with Belarusian cargo. Our rivers, which were once navigable, have not become shallow at all. But today they are plied mainly by fishermen's boats. The inland fleet, managed by the Belarusian River Shipping Company, is deteriorating rather than progressing. This conclusion, to put it briefly, was made at the board meeting of the State Control Committee.

But the state of affairs deserves a more detailed description. For clarity, let's divide the overall picture into three fragments.

Rivermen

Discuss whether a country in the 21st century needs a developed river fleet, we will not. If only because back in 2002, during a trip to the Gomel region, the President gave the Ministry of Transport a number of instructions regarding the development of the industry. It was planned, in particular, to systematically increase domestic water transport, develop the necessary infrastructure, invest in the repair and construction of ships for their own needs and for export, expand the range tourism services... Later, a program for the development of inland water and sea transport for 2011 - 2015 was adopted. It was necessary not to discuss, but to carry out what was planned. But the instructions were not carried out, the program was disrupted.

The board relied on facts and figures that were revealed by an audit of the activities of inland water and sea transport organizations. Its results look discouraging. State control specialists and representatives of the Ministry of Transport, who tried to justify themselves, agreed on only one thing: the entire infrastructure of the river shipping company rests on what was created back in Soviet times.

Over the past time, all sectors of the Belarusian economy, like social and other spheres, have seriously evolved quantitatively or qualitatively. Despite all the claims of the state and society to the furniture industry and woodworking, agriculture and construction, mechanical engineering and medicine in general, they are modern. Large amounts of money have been invested in each of these areas. Everywhere they sooner or later produced results: modernization, new technologies and products, increased competitiveness and export returns.

Only the river industry has not only frozen in the positions of a quarter-century ago, but has also gone backwards. Once upon a time I built, for example, passenger ships"Rocket" hydrofoils and industrial bulk carriers. Industry! Now, at best, she is only patching up dilapidated ships, at worst, she is busy with non-core matters. The volume of cargo transported per year collapsed from 18.5 million tons to Soviet time up to a million in the 90s. During the 2012 navigation season, the shipping company transported 2.7 million tons.

But it’s good that at least something from the industry remains. Otherwise, delivery to Ostrovets, for example, of a melt boiler, the most important component of a nuclear power plant power unit, would be much more difficult, cost more and take longer. The large components of the power unit were transported by water from Volgodonsk to Kherson, where they were loaded onto four of our barges, which reached Berezino with the critical cargo. This example alone proves that the country needs a modern high-tech river fleet.

Today it consists of 12 organizations employing 2,200 people, which is, to put it mildly, not enough for the industry. There are 8 ports that have the status of branches (in Gomel, Mozyr, Brest, Mikashevichi...), the design institution "Belsudoproekt", 3 waterways enterprises, shipbuilding and ship repair plants in Rechitsa, Gomel, Petrikov. Some factories repair some things or make small “coastal vessels” (actually boats), others produce lumber and metal structures.

The scale of the enterprises and how efficiently they work were shown by the confused explanations of Ruslan Strizh, director of the Dneproberezinsk waterways enterprise. There are 77 employees here. Of the 270 million rubles allocated for modernization last year, 250 were spent on... the executive's official car. At the same time, two trucks are rusting under open air: They actually haven’t moved for two years, from the date of purchase.

"Belsudoproekt" developed a design for a small-capacity vessel: it was not used. The same fate befell the modernization projects of a dredger, a floating exploration platform, a towing ship... The institution spent 600 million rubles from the innovation fund on such research in two years, which was virtually in vain. The capacity of the ports, which mainly handle sand and crushed stone, is 50 percent loaded, their portal cranes and dredgers are even less - 20 - 30 percent. The equipment is extremely worn out. The number of ships (also not new) on the shipping company’s balance sheet, having decreased from 492 units in 2010 to 416 last year, still looks respectable. But this includes, in addition to 9 passenger watercraft, fifty tugs, a hundred barges and 88 auxiliary units: cranes, berths, landing stages, dredgers, pontoons...

Sailors

If river boaters actually do something, then the word “sailors” can be safely put in quotation marks. What does, for example, the Belarusian Shipping Company OJSC, which was specially created for the development of export infrastructure, do? Having practically withdrawn from core activities, he trades in petroleum products: the share of forwarding services in revenue in 2012 was less than one percent.

The Belarusian transport, forwarding and freight company has become... an intermediary in the trade of construction materials. Moreover, it worked at a loss for itself, but in favor of private counterparties, actually lending to them. Whether this constitutes a criminal offense remains to be seen. Losses were covered by renting out office space. The state invested 1,300 sq. m. in the authorized capital of the closed joint-stock company - in order to secure loans. meters of premises with a market value of more than 2 million dollars. On part of this square, the “seafarers” set up a fitness center with a sauna for themselves, which was visited mainly by company executives. Payments for electricity alone exceeded 60 million rubles per month. The managers apparently needed a lot of rest: they regularly worked on weekends. The state control did not find a clear need for this, but accurately calculated the amount of additional payments to the general director, his deputy, the chief accountant, the secretary... However, it is difficult to separate top managers from ordinary personnel in this case: the entire staff of the company sometimes consisted of 4 - 6 people.

CJSC "Belarusian Shipping Company" specializes in... transportation of household and industrial waste by road (!) transport. When asked by the Chairman of the State Control Committee, Alexander Yakobson, how many tons of potash fertilizers the company transported in a year, the answer was zero. The manager explained his failure by the machinations of certain third parties who registered a company with the same name. As a result, they say, the courts in London and New York arrested our accounts. But the company did not have the strength (desire, skills!) to defend its financial interests and its name.

The board stated that the Ministry of Transport does not have personnel capable of purposefully developing a capable fleet and competing on the seas; transportation is farmed out to foreign companies, on which the country is losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ministry of Transport

The head of the department of maritime and river transport Ministry of Transport Andrey Chernobylets. It is curious that for comparison I chose... Mongolia - a country with only mountain rivers, lying much further from the seas than ours and seriously inferior to it in terms of economic potential and population. But this comparison was not in our favor: 177 sea vessels sail under the Mongolian flag, only 7 under the Belarusian flag... In general, shipping, which is capable of earning hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, has a negative foreign trade balance of 6 million. dollars.

Another significant fact. Based on the results of inspections, the state control fined organizations water transport Almost a billion rubles (with their modest turnover), another 200 million rubles were added to the budget in the form of taxes. At the same time, the ministry’s own control and audit service has not seen any violations for years, although it is even located in the same building as the freight and shipping companies...

The board assessed the work of the Ministry of Transport and its leaders responsible for the development of shipping harshly: “unsuccessful.” The river fleet is aging, the sea fleet is gone, and there is no investment, no development strategy, no initiative in its development. The program for the development of inland waterway and sea transport for 2011 - 2015 has actually failed. In essence, it was only a declaration of intent: its implementation was not monitored or controlled.

But, as A. Yakobson noted in his concluding remarks, there are no unsolvable problems in the country. This means that this one will also be solved, since it has been set: the river fleet will receive an impetus for development, and the naval fleet will be created. One way or another, pusher or tug, the shipping industry will be refloated and released into the fairway.

During the times of the USSR, there was a tradition of giving naval vessels of the civil fleet and warships of the Navy the names of cities of the Union republics, regardless of whether the country had access to the sea or not. For example, the aircraft-carrying cruiser Minsk, launched in 1975, was named after the Belarusian capital. But the matter was not limited to the Belarusian capital alone. TUT.BY decided to find out which cities of Belarus can be found in the names of sea vessels that plow or have plied the expanses of the seas and oceans.

My homeland is Belarus

Before moving on to Belarusian toponymy in the World Ocean, it is worth mentioning the fact that the very name of our country was used as a name for a sea vessel, albeit in its Soviet-Russian name. The automobile-passenger airliner "Belarus" rolled off the stocks in Turku, Finland in 1975. "Belorussia" became the first vessel of the R-1765 project and gave its name to this type of vessel.

The Belorussia class vessels were used to transport passengers and cars on internal Black Sea routes within the borders of the USSR. The liners were built to comfortably carry 480 passengers and 250 cars.

Subsequently, it turned out that the actual number of cars transported by ships was significantly less than the calculated one - in the late 1970s, the level of motorization of the population in the USSR was only about 40 cars per 1000 people. In the 1980s, all five Belarus class ships underwent refurbishment at West German shipyards, during which new passenger cabins, restaurants and cinemas were installed in the liners' vast garages. With the collapse of the USSR, all ships were sold to various shipping companies around the world. The first vessel of the series, the liner Belorussia, was renamed Kazakhstan II after being sold in 1993. In 1996, the ship changed ownership again and began to serve under the name Delphin. cruise routes in the Mediterranean and Baltic seas.

Naval "Minsk"

Traditionally for ship names Military navy The USSR chose large cities, most often the capitals of the union republics. As already mentioned, the name of the Belarusian capital was used more than once as a name for a warship. For the first time, the name “Minsk” was given to the leader of Project 38 destroyers of the Baltic Fleet of the USSR Navy. The destroyer, which entered service in 1938, fought a number of battles in the Soviet-Finnish War, took part in the annexation of Latvia, and went through the entire Great Patriotic War, during which it was severely damaged several times. After the war, Minsk was converted into a training ship, in which role it served until 1958. That same year, the ship was withdrawn from the fleet, turned into a floating target and sunk by missiles in the Gulf of Finland.

The next bearer of the name of the Belarusian capital was the aircraft-carrying cruiser Minsk of Project 1143. Ships of this type were, in fact, the first aircraft carriers in the USSR Navy capable of serving combat jet aircraft. Nevertheless, the desire to combine the functions of an aircraft carrier and an anti-submarine cruiser in one ship, as well as the weak characteristics of Soviet carrier-based aircraft, negated the combat effectiveness of the ships. The fate of the cruiser "Minsk" is known and not as sad as that of some of its brothers. After being withdrawn from the fleet in the early 1990s, the ship was supposed to suffer the fate of scrap metal, but, nevertheless, due to the bankruptcy of the new owners, the Minsk survived and even became an attraction. Until February 2016 theme park Minsk World, based on a cruiser, was located in Shenzhen, China. The park is now closed and the ship has been towed to Zhoushan for repairs, after which it will be moved to a new theme park in Nantong, according to the owners.

Not all ships named after the Belarusian capital were excluded from the fleet. The large landing ship Minsk survived the hard times of the 1990s and is still part of the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy. However, it received this name only in 2000; before that, built in 1983 at the Polish shipyard in Gdansk, the ship was simply called BDK-43.

The coast guard ship "Minsk" of the border department of the FSB of the Russian Federation is also on combat duty in the Baltic Sea. Kaliningrad region. The Project 12412 small anti-submarine ship was built in 1987 and was originally called simply PSKR-817, and, like the BDK-43, was renamed Minsk in 2000.

However, not only warships bore the proud name “Minsk”. In 1963, from the stocks of the Gdansk shipyard. The bulk carrier "Minsk" of project B-44 (Poland) left the Paris Commune. The cargo ship worked for the Black Sea Shipping Company for more than two decades and was decommissioned in 1989.

From Brest to Bykhov

Minsk, of course, is popular, but far from the only Belarusian city after which they were named. sea ​​vessels. Also in the names of the ships one could find almost all modern regional centers of Belarus and some regional ones. First on the list is the small anti-submarine ship "Brest" of Project 1124 M, which is part of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy. Built in 1988, the MPK was first called “Brest Komsomolets”, in 1992 it was renamed MPK-194, and in 2000 - to “Brest”.

Combat duty in waters Pacific Ocean carried by the border patrol ship "Brest" of project 745P. The ship's home port - distant Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - shares a distance of just over seven and a half thousand kilometers with the Belarusian city.

In the early 1950s, the Leningrad TsKB-32 tanker of Project 563 of the Kazbek type was developed (the name was given after the first vessel of the project built). In the 1950s, 70 ships of this project rolled off the slipways of Soviet shipyards, two of them were named in honor of the cities of Belarus. The tanker, named "Grodno", entered service in April 1956. The process of building a ship on the stocks of the Kherson Shipyard is captured in a color photograph by the famous Soviet photographer Semyon Fridlyand.

The second vessel of this project with a Belarusian city in the name was the tanker Molodechno, built at the Admiralty Shipyard in Leningrad in 1955. It would seem, why was such a large ship named after a city that not only has no access to the sea, but doesn’t even have a navigable river? The answer, perhaps, lies in the fact that until 1960 the city of Molodechno, like Grodno, was. Both ships “Grodno” and “Molodechno” served for a long time in the Black Sea Shipping Company and were decommissioned in the late 1970s.

By the way, this is not the only case when the name of the city Molodechno was given sea ​​vessel. In 1988, the fishing trawler Molodechno was built at the Yaroslavl Shipyard. He worked for a long time at the Andeg fishing collective farm near Murmansk, until in the late 2000s he was sold to Argentina, where he changed his name to Tango I.

Another regional center of Belarus, whose name became the name of the ship, was Mogilev. At the Finnish shipyard in the city of Turku in 1952, the Mogilev dry cargo vessel of the Hassan type was launched. The dry cargo ship was included in the Northern Shipping Company of the USSR MMF, where it worked until 1975. In 1984, it was cut into scrap metal. Another ship of this project was the dry cargo ship "Pinsk", built in 1953 (from 1939 to 1954, the city of Pinsk was the center of the Pinsk region).

The tradition of naming naval vessels after cities was not limited only to regional centers, past or present. Many ships were named after Belarusian regional centers, and some even combined the name settlement and the specialization of the vessel. For example, in 1962, two timber carriers of the same type, Bobruiskles and Braslawles, were built at the Gdansk shipyard. Both vessels served on the routes of the USSR maritime fleet until the end of the 1980s.

However, more often the ships were named more traditionally, using only the full name of the city. One of the large refrigerated fishing trawlers of Project 1288 built in 1980 was named “Borisov”. Currently, the vessel is owned by Okeanrybflot OJSC, and its home port is Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

The Project 503 refrigerated seiner-trawler “Bykhov” is engaged in fishing in the waters of the Kola Bay of the Barents Sea.

The huge bulk carrier, built at a shipyard in the GDR in 1982, was named after the city in the Gomel region - Dobrush. For a long time the ship sailed under the Ukrainian flag and was registered at the port of Mariupol. In the late 2000s, Dobrush was sold for scrap to Vietnam.

The seiner trawler “Kobrin”, built in 1989 according to a design similar to the “Bykhov”, in the port of Klaipeda, Lithuania.

In 1966, the Mozyr bulk carrier of project B-44 (Poland) was built at a shipyard in Szczecin, Poland (the above-mentioned bulk carrier Minsk was built according to the same project). Until 1990, "Mozyr" was assigned to the Black Sea Shipping Company in the port of Odessa. In 1992, it was cut up for scrap in Shanghai.

In 1969 and 1970, two dry cargo ships of Project R-1476, Novopolotsk and Novogrudok, were built at the Finnish shipyard in Turku. Both vessels were sent to the Baltic Shipping Company of the USSR MMF. In 1996, Novogrudok was sold for scrap in Bangladesh, where it ended its journey.

The fate of the bulk carrier Novopolotsk was a little different. In 1996, the ship was also withdrawn from the Baltic Shipping Company, but was sold to new ownership in the United United Arab Emirates, where it changed its name to Wald Al Agouz. However, in 2001 it was sold for scrap.

Novopolotsk's neighbor in the agglomeration - ancient Polotsk - also gave its name to a sea vessel for some time. The bulk carrier "Polotsk" was built at the shipyard in Nikolaev in 1963. Over the years of operation, the vessel had registration in three shipping companies of the USSR - Black Sea, Northern and Azov. From 1990 to 1992, “Polotsk” worked in a private Ukrainian-Arab company under the new name Dubai Pioneer. In 1993, the cargo ship was decommissioned and towed for scrap to India.

The cargo ship "Orsha" left the slipways of the Japanese shipyard in Osaka in 1963. The vessel's design was developed by the Hitachi Zosen Corporation commissioned by the USSR. A total of 8 vessels of this type were built, all of which subsequently worked as part of the Far Eastern Shipping Company of the USSR MMF. Orsha was decommissioned in 1993 and sent for disposal to Bangladesh.

In conclusion, two more sea fishing vessels should be mentioned, bearing the names of not the largest cities in Belarus. The Ostrovets seiner was built according to the Atlantic-333 project at a shipyard in East German Stralsund in 1985. He worked at the Zapruda fishing farm in the Kaliningrad region. In 2005, the ship was sold to Georgia and changed its name to Carmen.

The fishing trawler "Pruzhany" was built in 1980 according to the Polish project B-400 at a shipyard in Gdansk. Until the mid-1990s, he worked in fishing in Liepaja, Latvia. In 1996, the trawler was written off and disposed of.

In the recent past, Belarus, which did not have its own fleet, was nevertheless quite widely represented in the vastness of the World Ocean. As you can see, many ships that bore the names of Belarusian cities did not survive the hard times of the 1990s, and today only a few from the once extensive list go to sea.

Photo sources: marinetraffic.com, shipspotting.com, vmf.net.ru, fleetphoto.ru, wikimedia.org