MINSK, 14 September (BelTA) – The elimination of an illegal armed group and the alleviation of consequences of a civilian emergency were practiced in a training area of the Emergencies Ministry in Borisov District, Minsk Oblast as part of the Belarusian-Russian strategic army exercise Zapad 2025, BelTA has learned.
According to the concept of the exercise, military personnel blocked and destroyed an illegal armed group, which had captured part of an aircraft repair enterprise.
The commanding officer of a combined-arms reserve reconnoitered the facility and the surrounding area at night using drones and identified the encampment sites of the militants. A combined unit marched to the enterprise, including by crossing a water obstacle, and deployed at assigned lines. The military personnel cordoned off the enterprise first.
Drones were used to observe the progress of the firefight and fly recon missions.
The information was processed by the commanding officer of the combined tactical unit on the spot. Later on the officer instructed the commander of the strike drone unit to destroy the militants’ command post with a surprise attack. After that the unit commander tasked an armored group in a sheltered position to fire for effect at the militants.
By using army engineers as well as engineer drones, Belarusian units breached the defenses with explosives.
In order to distract militants on the northern flank Belarusian military personnel organized a deceptive maneuver by covering part of the infrastructure in a false direction with a smoke screen and by carrying out an FPV drone strike.
Later on aerial reconnaissance detected that some of the militants were pulling out from an oil supply depot. Decisions were made to penetrate the oil supply depot while using the breached defenses to insert an assault team. Fire support teams moved into and occupied a workshop, the area around a crane installation, an offloading station, and secured a flare stack by setting up a sniper position and a drone operator “nest” on top of it.
The enemy also used FPV drones. In order to increase the survival rate of assault teams in the face of the enemy’s drones, the personnel used the organization of aerosol concealment, terrain folds, and shelters in addition to pump-action shotguns and blinding lights.
One of the assault team soldiers was wounded. He was evacuated out of the combat area to a Rapsodiya armored medical vehicle.
As a result of the firefight to cleanse the aircraft repair plant a surviving drone team of the simulated enemy carried out a strike against an oil storage facility. The commanding officer linked up with Emergencies Ministry personnel to localize and extinguish the fire. A surviving machine gun team of the militants complicated the fire-fighting process with harassing fire on approaches to the oil storage facility. The unit commander ordered a BTR-82A armored personnel carrier to destroy the machine gun nest.
The remaining militants refused to surrender. They understood the futility of their position and bunkered down in a building. The unit commander decided they should be destroyed with drones and the BTR-82A armored personnel carrier.
Emergencies Ministry units localized and extinguished the fire at the oil storage facility. Territorial defense troops arrived at the site in order to take over the duty of guarding the aircraft repair enterprise.
The commanding officer of a Belarusian army unit with the callsign Armada talked to reporters about peculiarities of storming this facility. “It had connecting tunnels, a well-developed network of buildings, and various concealments. The enemy set up barricades, engineer obstacles, thus making it more difficult to storm the place,” officer said.
The commanding officer of a Russian army battalion with the callsign Irtysh remarked that all the training missions had been carried out in full at this location.
“As part of the tactical episode units of the armed forces of the two states and units of Belarus’ Emergencies Ministry demonstrated the highest level of cohesion and interaction,” Deputy Commander of the Northwestern Operational Command Pavel Shebeko noted as he summarized results of the episode.
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