MINSK, 15 September (BelTA) - The level of openness demonstrated during the Zapad 2025 exercise is difficult to overstate, Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin told the media, BelTA learned from the Defense Ministry.
“The level of openness that we are demonstrating during the exercise [Zapad 2025] is difficult to overstate. The main reason is that we have nothing to hide. We are also committed to reducing tensions in the Eastern European region and are taking concrete, practical steps to achieve this. The most important step was the decision by our president to move the main military operations inland,” Viktor Khrenin noted.
An equally significant step was the decision to reduce the scale of the exercise. "The number of troops involved is approximately 7,000: 6,000 military personnel from the Republic of Belarus and about 1,000 from the Russian Federation. In accordance with the Vienna Document, exercises of such scale do not require notification or observation. Here, we have taken another practical step to reduce tensions and invited representatives of all states participating in the Vienna Document. We expected to host more than 100 people. As we can see, only one representative from the OSCE is observing this exercise," the minister noted.
“The level of openness that we are demonstrating during the exercise [Zapad 2025] is difficult to overstate. The main reason is that we have nothing to hide. We are also committed to reducing tensions in the Eastern European region and are taking concrete, practical steps to achieve this. The most important step was the decision by our president to move the main military operations inland,” Viktor Khrenin noted.
An equally significant step was the decision to reduce the scale of the exercise. "The number of troops involved is approximately 7,000: 6,000 military personnel from the Republic of Belarus and about 1,000 from the Russian Federation. In accordance with the Vienna Document, exercises of such scale do not require notification or observation. Here, we have taken another practical step to reduce tensions and invited representatives of all states participating in the Vienna Document. We expected to host more than 100 people. As we can see, only one representative from the OSCE is observing this exercise," the minister noted.
He recalled that the decision to hold the exercise was made by the leaders of Belarus and Russia in 2009. “Since then, every two years, we conduct exercises either on the territory of the Republic of Belarus or on the territory of the Russian Federation. Incidentally, this is already the fifth exercise held on our territory. Every exercise, we face targeted information attacks during the preparation of the exercise and especially during its conduct. We have heard all sorts of things from politicians and experts of various levels: that we are threatening NATO, that we are about to invade the Baltic countries. We take these information attacks calmly because, as I said, we have nothing to hide. We are preparing to defend our country," Viktor Khrenin noted.
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