Valery Revenko
MINSK, 12 August (BelTA) – The Belarusian-Russian strategic military exercise Zapad 2025 [West 2025] is used by NATO countries as a reason for militarization. Chief of the International Military Cooperation Department, Aide for International Military Cooperation to the Belarusian Defense Minister Valery Revenko made the statement during a media briefing held to discuss the Zapad 2025 exercise in the context of the military and political situation, BelTA has learned.
Valery Revenko remarked: “The Zapad 2025 exercise is a scheduled component of the joint training of forces and assets of the regional military force. It was preceded by a complex of events held in the territory of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation. However, as the time for holding the exercise draws near, actions of Western countries, primarily neighboring countries that are NATO member states, are becoming increasingly aggressive. For August-September the number of exercises of the Alliance’s joint armed forces as well as exercises of national armed forces has increased from six to ten.”
One of the events is the Iron Defender 2025 exercise that will take place in Poland’s territory in September. “The military and political leadership of this state has declared that this series of exercises will involve over 34,000 military personnel and 600 units of military hardware. The numbers exceed the number of Zapad 2025 exercise participants by several times. The Iron Defender exercise will involve military units from all Polish divisions as well as a foreign contingent. Poland’s eastern areas have been declared the main locations for holding the exercise. It means that the war games will take place in the immediate vicinity of our borders,” the Defense Ministry representative stressed.
Apart from that, railway transport has been used to deliver Bundeswehr weapons and hardware to Lithuania’s territory as part of preparations for the multinational exercise Big Eagle 2025. “The Lithuanian defense agency is also deploying additional air defense assets near the border with the Republic of Belarus, is rescheduling a number of exercises to August and September and is also increasing the intensity of joint combat training events of Lithuanian and U.S. units in the military training area Pabrade 15km away from our border,” Valery Revenko added.
For the sake of disguising the true goals of the steps and events organized by Western states individual mass media and Internet resources continue publishing contradictory, provocative materials that are contrary to reality about the forthcoming military exercise in Belarus’ territory. “One can conclude that the Belarusian-Russian military exercise is used as a reason for the unending militarization and for increasing the number and the scale of operational training and combat training events. Similar things already happened in the past before joint exercises of previous years and resulted in the deployment of NATO combat tactical groups in neighboring countries. The number of the combat tactical groups continues rising,” the defense minister aide concluded.
Follow us on:
