Baranavichy Radar Station

Work on the radar started in 1982, a direct response to NATO's decision to station Pershing II missiles in West Germany — missiles that could reach Soviet territory in six to eight minutes. Construction stalled when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and it might have stayed stalled if Moscow hadn't lost its early-warning coverage of the northwest a few years later. Latvia shut down the Dnestr-M radar at Skrunda, and Russia needed a replacement fast. In 1995, Russia and newly independent Belarus signed a 25-year lease: Russia could use the land and buildings at no cost, with no taxes and no charge for communication lines. Testing began in 1994, full operational status followed in 2002, and Belarus renewed the arrangement in 2021.

The Baranavichy Radar Station is located near Hantsavichy in Belarus's Brest Region, roughly 8 kilometers northeast of Hantsavichy and 48 kilometers from the city of Baranavichy. The station is formally known as the Baranavichy radar node ("Узел «Барановичи»"), while Hantsavichy refers to the nearby settlement rather than the facility's primary designation. Either way, the hardware is the same: a 70M6 "Volga"-type phased-array radar, split into a transmitter and receiver about three kilometers apart. According to Wikipedia, it scans a 120-degree arc out to roughly 2,000 kilometers, watching for ballistic missile launches from Western Europe, the North Atlantic, and the Mediterranean. Satellite tracking comes as a secondary function.

Baranavichy answers to Russia's Aerospace Forces (VKS) — historically referred to as the Space Forces in older sources — and it feeds data straight into the 820th Main Centre for Missile Attack Warning outside Moscow. The military garrison built around it goes by its own name, Kletsk-2 — a small, closed town whose entire reason for existing is the radar next door. Unlike Baikonur's costly rent, Moscow pays nothing for the ground here. That difference says something about how Russia treats Belarus compared with Kazakhstan: one relationship runs on invoices, the other on alliance.