The drills, named Union Resolve 2022, are due to take place at training grounds in Belarus until February 20, Poland’s PAP news agency reported.
Announcing the manoeuvres, Belarus’ strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko said they would be held in the west and south of the country and had been planned in December with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“These should be normal manoeuvres staged under a concrete scenario of confronting forces from the West (the Baltic states and Poland) and South (Ukraine),” Lukashenka told reporters.
This scenario of “repulsing external aggression” is in line with the message emanating from the Kremlin and Minsk, that the West, led by the United States, is seeking “to create upheaval in Belarus and weaken Russia,” the PAP news agency reported.
According to unofficial information, Russia sent dozens of trains packed with soldiers and military hardware for the training exercises in Belarus.
Experts say the joint military drills are designed to up the pressure on Ukrainian authorities and, in the worst-case scenario, mount an attack from Belarusian soil.
In recent days, satellite images showed a large concentration of Russian troops and military equipment near Belarus’ border with Ukraine, according to the Reuters news agency.
Meanwhile, Minsk said the manoeuvres had been organised due to “the situation around Belarus’ borders, rising tensions in Europe and a worsening political and military situation around the world.”
Both Minsk and Moscow offered assurances that after the exercises, Russian troops and equipment would return to their permanent bases in Russia, the PAP news agency reported.
Poland ‘aware of threats’
Poland’s Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said on Thursday that the Polish army was taking care of the country’s security amid tensions beyond its borders.
Asked in an interview with public broadcaster Polish Radio if the army was on “heightened combat alert” due to the Russian-Belarusian exercises, Błaszczak said that “the Polish military is looking after the security of our homeland.”
Błaszczak added the army had increased in size since 2015, with the soldiers being “well-trained” and “supplied with modern equipment.”
He stated: ”We are aware of the threats.”
“We are also prepared to deter the aggressor,” Błaszczak told Polish Radio, adding that NATO allies, the United States and Britain were all sending additional forces to Poland.
Mariusz Błaszczak. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Waszczuk
In recent days, planes carrying US troops and army equipment have landed in Poland as part of efforts to bolster NATO's eastern flank and reinforce allies in Eastern Europe amid a Russian military buildup near Ukraine.
A Boeing C-17 Globemaster III cargo jet carrying a group of US soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division lands at Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport in southeastern Poland earlier this month. Photo: PAP/Darek Delmanowicz
Meanwhile, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on Monday that Britain would send an additional 350 troops to Poland.
Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak and British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace meet in London on Monday, Feb. 7, 2022. Photo: Justin Ng/Avalon via PAP
Tensions around Ukraine
Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops around Ukraine in recent weeks, according to media reports, raising fears in the West that Moscow may be preparing for a new invasion of the country.
Moscow has denied plans for an assault but says it could take unspecified military action if its security demands are not met, the Reuters news agency has reported.
Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and then fomented a separatist conflict in that country's eastern Donbas region, leading to a wave of EU and US sanctions against Moscow and Russian officials.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, Reuters