Large joint military exercises between Belarus and Russia will be scaled down and moved away from areas bordering NATO member countries, according to officials in Minsk.
The rotational ‘Zapad’ (‘West’) maneuvers, reportedly planned for mid-September, involved up to 200,000 troops when they were last held in 2021, just months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned last month that this year’s drills could be “cover” for an assault on a neighboring country, saying, “this is usually how they start their new attacks.”
But in an announcement this week, Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said the strategic exercises would be smaller in size than originally planned and would be shifted inland, away from Minsk’s western borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
Another top official said, “the number of troops participating in the exercise will be almost halved.”
Claiming that the scale and intensity of the Zapad drills had always been incomparable to NATO’s own maneuvers in Europe, Khrenin said the downscaling was a sign of Belarus’ “readiness for dialogue, compromise and easing of tensions.”
“We are doing this, frankly speaking, without hoping for a constructive response,” the minister commented, cited by state press agency Belta.
Troops tied up in Ukraine
However, a top U.S. defense think tank dismissed the gesture as an attempt to “promote a veneer of cooperation and distract from Russia’s limited military capacity outside of the Ukraine theater.”
According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the real motive for cutting back the exercises is connected to the war with Kyiv, which has entered its fourth year.
“Belarusian officials previously claimed that at least 13,000 personnel would participate in the Zapad-2025 exercise, and Russia and Belarus likely had to downsize the joint exercise as most of its forces are fighting in Ukraine,” the ISW said.
It pointed to several formations that took part in the 2021 exercises that are currently tied up in Ukraine, adding that Russian officials “unexpectedly canceled” similar drills in 2023 “very likely due to Russia’s equipment and manpower requirements for the war in Ukraine.”
Poland promised ‘adequate’ response
Back in 2021, Zapad maneuvers stretched over thousands of miles, from Ashuluk on the Caspian Sea to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic, and included several locations in Belarus, including Brest, near the border with Poland.
In April, Warsaw’s deputy defense minister said that Polish forces and their NATO allies would respond to this year’s exercises “in an adequate manner” through “extensive Polish and NATO drills.”
Valery Revenko, an aide to Khrenin and head of Belarus’ International Military Cooperation Department, said on Wednesday he would invite international observers to oversee the drills “so that everyone could make sure that it is really defensive in nature.”
He said Minsk had invited NATO members, including Poland, as observers—but added that they had not received an answer and accused Western powers of not wanting dialogue.
They are moving them, away from NATO borders, because it would be humiliating to watch two armies conducting war manoeuvres with donkeys and motorbikes.
Could be fake news.
They are not going to hide 100,000 troops anyway.
ok. better safe than sorry.
Smoke and mirrors. The announced size of the drill was overblown in the first place to scare the West and to emit strength.
I’m not sure about emitting strength, more like bs.
Yeah, this is just more potemkin play to try to make it look like putler is making a concession to Trump.