Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Friday issued a warning to Minsk against staging provocations during the upcoming Belarus-Russia “Zapad” military drills in September, urging European partners to stay vigilant.
“The build-up of Russian troops on the borders of Ukraine in 2021-2022 took place under the cover of the joint military exercises of Russia and Belarus ‘Zapad-2021’. We warn Minsk against reckless provocations,” the ministry said on X.
It urged Belarusian authorities “to remain prudent, not to approach the borders and not to provoke” Ukrainian armed forces.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has dismissed the idea that Minsk would utilise the exercises to attack its neighbours as “complete nonsense”.
In an interview with Time Magazine earlier this month, Lukashenko said he had decided to move the location of the joint military drills away from Belarus’ western borders with European Union countries, citing security concerns raised in Poland and the Baltic nations.
Zapad-2025
The scheduled drills, called “Zapad-2025” (West-2025), have raised security concerns in neighbouring Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
“The cooperation between the regimes in Moscow and Minsk poses an immediate threat not only to Ukraine, but also to Poland, the Baltic states and all of Europe, and also hinders peaceful efforts of the United States President Donald Trump to end the war,” Ukraine’s ministry said.
The military exercise will include drills on the planned use of nuclear weapons and the Russian-made, intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik missile, according to Belarus’ defence minister.
Earlier this month, the Belarusian Defence Ministry stated that Russia and Belarus will conduct joint strategic military exercises in Belarus from September 12 to 16.
The aim of the drills is to test the capabilities of Russia and Belarus and “ensure the military security of the Union State and their readiness to repel possible aggression,” the ministry cited Major General Valery Revenko as saying.
Revenko, the Major General, said the Belarusian-Russian drills were “being used as a pretext for ongoing militarisation” in neighbouring NATO countries, citing upcoming joint NATO drills in Poland involving at least 34,000 troops.
The Union State is a borderless union and alliance between the two former Soviet republics and neighbours.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned earlier this year, without giving details or citing evidence, that Russia was “preparing something” in Belarus this summer under the guise of routine military exercises.
Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, has seen its relations with Western neighbours and Ukraine deteriorate over the last few years after Moscow used Belarusian territory as a staging ground for an assault on Kyiv that it launched in February 2022.
(With inputs from Reuters)
