Secret Tetraedr Contracts: Armenian Drones Shot Down by Belarusian Pechora-2TM Systems
For years, Armenian officials have publicly protested Belarus’ sale of weapons to Azerbaijan, its adversary in a long-running conflict.
Now, leaked internal records from Belarus indicate that some of those weapons were deployed against Armenian forces in the 2020 war with Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The revelations are particularly sensitive for Armenia because Belarus is formally an ally: Both are members of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
Despite that alliance, the private Belarusian arms manufacturer Tetraedr sold equipment and services that allowed Azerbaijan to upgrade its anti-aircraft systems, according to company emails and internal reports. The files were obtained by OCCRP and its partners, Hetq in Armenia and Buro Media, which is run by Belarusian journalists in exile.
One internal Tetraedr report says the air defense system purchased by Azerbaijan was “actively used” to destroy Armenian drones during the six-week conflict. The report credited the company’s Pechora-2TM surface-to-air missile systems with downing 11 unmanned aerial vehicles.
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Armenia’s Defense Ministry declined to comment, citing state secrecy laws. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry did not respond to questions.
Nagorno-Karabakh has been a center of conflict between the two countries since the early 1990s, when local militia forces backed by the Armenian military took control of the mountainous region. Although populated mostly by ethnic Armenians, the territory lies within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders.
In September 2020, Azerbaijan launched a six-week military operation that reclaimed most of Nagorno-Karabakh, and seized the remaining territory in a September 2023 flash offensive, causing more than 115,000 Armenians to flee the region. Authoritarian Belarusian President Alexandr Lukashenko hailed Azerbaijan’s operation as a “war of liberation.”
In response, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan vowed never to visit Belarus as long as Lukashenko remains in power.
The revelations about Belarusian weapons being used by Azerbaijan come as relations between Armenia and Belarus remain tense, despite a U.S. -brokered peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia this month.
The leaked records show that Tetraedr signed at least 16 contracts to supply and support Azerbaijan’s military. These include two contracts — worth over $13 million in total for repairs, maintenance, and support of Pechora-2TM systems — signed shortly after an October 2017 visit to the Belarusian capital of Minsk by Azerbaijan’s defense minister, Zakir Hasanov.
Tetraedr’s counterparty on at least nine of these contracts was not the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry itself, but a privately owned intermediary based in the British Virgin Islands called N.P.O. Navigation Systems.
While the use of intermediaries is common in the international arms trade and not necessarily illegal, experts warn that routing contracts through offshore firms can heighten the risk of corruption.
“The more layers of secrecy and lack of transparency are introduced in arms trade, the bigger the opportunities are for corrupt officials to make a personal gain,” said Pieter Wezeman, a senior arms-transfer researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The owners of companies are not publicly listed in the British Virgin Islands, which is known as a secrecy jurisdiction. But the Pandora Papers leak of offshore corporate records — obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with OCCRP and other media outlets — reveals a partial ownership history of N.P.O. Navigation Systems.
Records show that between 2006 and 2020, the company was owned by another British Virgin Islands company, Sotel Alliance Ltd. Records in the leak only show beneficial owners as of December 2016: two Azerbaijani businessmen named Fuad Seyidaliyev and Arif Rahimov.
Seyidaliyev and Rahimov have both served as legal representatives and senior executives of the Azerbaijani company Azairtechservice, which has worked with the Azerbaijani military, including in a joint venture with Tetraedr. (Azairtechservice has since been renamed Esis Technologies.)
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In early 2020, control of N.P.O. Navigation Systems shifted to another man described in the record as Seyidaliyev and Rahimov’s trusted representative, before being transferred two months later to David Sutovsky, an Israeli citizen who had served as the company’s director.
N.P.O. Navigation Systems did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Rahimov or Sutovsky.
Reached by phone, Seyidaliyev denied links to the firm before hanging up. He did not respond to follow-up written questions.
Pavel Raznokidis