Russia and Belarus will perform a joint military exercise called West 2025 in September, attended by more than 13,000 soldiers. Valerij Revenko, advisor to the Belarusian Defense Minister for International Military Cooperation, announced this on the briefing in Minsk on Thursday. TASR informs about this on the basis of AP report.
She recalled that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been reigning for more than 30 years, allowed the Russian forces to use the territory of his country to invaded neighboring Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and to place some tactical nuclear weapons.
Russian troops invaded Ukraine just after joint exercise with the Belarusian army. Ukraine and Belarus are 1084 kilometers long.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj drew attention to the re -concentration of Russian forces in Belarus at the beginning of February, bordering on three NATO member countries – Latvia, Lithuania and Poland – which, in his opinion, could prepare the ground for a potential attack. However, Russia has repeatedly denied the accusations that it could attack a NATO member.
In this context, Revenko said that Belarus is open to mutual military inspections with Poland to a depth of 80 kilometers from the common border. According to him, this would sign that Poland is interested in “good neighborhood relations”.
“If Poland refuses or ignore it, we will have a different opinion,” Revenko said.
In December 2024 Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a contract providing security guarantees Belarus, including the possible deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to avert aggression. At that time, Lukashenko asked Putin to deploy more advanced weapons in Belarus, including the Orešnik ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, which Russia first used in November in the war in Ukraine.
Putin responded that Orešnik missiles could be deployed in Belarus in the second half of 2025.
Russia did not disclose how many tactical nuclear weapons had been deployed in Belarus, but Lukashenko said in December that there are several dozen at present.
