Did Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko ride the agricultural tractor MTZ-50 at a speed of 280 kilometers (174 miles) per hour? No, that's not true: This is technically impossible. In fact, he drove a Tesla at that velocity.
A video making that claim (archived here) was posted on the TikTok account @epicbattlesworld on June 11, 2023. The caption is (translated from Russian to English by Lead Stories staff):
280 km/h till the end
In the footage, Lukashenko says in Russian (as translated by Lead Stories staff):
The MTZ-50 tractor was my first experience. You can drive it at any speed. I honestly admit that I drove it at 280 km/h on the ring road. I was so scared that I thought it could take off.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jun 20 11:08:46 2023 UTC)
This video was manipulated. In the original footage, produced in November 2017, Lukashenko talked about the need to start producing electric cars in Belarus and shares with journalists his extensive experience as a driver of various vehicles. Among them, he mentioned the famous Belarusian MTZ-50 tractor and the Tesla electric car.
According to the technical data, the Belarus MTZ 50 tractor can reach a maximum speed of 33 kilometers (20 miles) per hour. Lukashenko said that he had tested the Tesla electric car and mentioned that it could be driven at any speed. He admitted that he had driven it at 280 km/h and was afraid that it would take off like an airplane, but asserted that it was an excellent car.
This story was already trending on TikTok in November 2022 and was the subject of parodies such as here. The video continued to appear in 2023 here, here and here.
