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News > Belarus

Belarus Warns of US-NATO Military Expansion in Eastern Europe

  • As tensions rise with neighbouring NATO states, Belarus is set to acquire over $1 billion worth of arms & military hardware from Russia, Lukashenko has announced.

    As tensions rise with neighbouring NATO states, Belarus is set to acquire over $1 billion worth of arms & military hardware from Russia, Lukashenko has announced. | Photo: Twitter @27khv

Published 16 September 2021
Opinion

Belarus warns about the deteriorating situation on the borders of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in the face of NATO's increased military presence.

“Increasing tensions on the western borders of the CSTO is a dangerous trend,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said during a session of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, on Thursday.

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Lukashenko condemned, above all, the U.S. military expansion in Eastern Europe, which, in his opinion, strengthened the combat capabilities of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members in the area.

In addition, he raised his voice against the non-defensive exercises in the Baltic States and Ukraine that the military bloc is carrying out with increasing frequency. He specifically complained about how maneuvers of this nature have doubled in the last five years, with the implementation of up to 90 major drills per year and the number of forces involved ranging from 60,000 to 110,000.

Asserting that all these operations aim to generate “provocations and incidents” in the region, Lukashenko referred to the nervous reaction of Belarus' neighbors such as Ukraine, the Baltic countries and Poland to the Belarusian-Russian exercises, dubbed “Zapad-2021.”

“Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky has nodded that the Belarusian-Russian exercise shuffles options to capture Kiev [the Ukrainian capital], Odessa [a Ukrainian port city], and Kharkov [eastern Ukraine],” he has said in this regard.

The U.S. and other NATO allies have increased their military presence in Eastern Europe, generating controversy over ongoing tensions between Belarus and the West, which refuses to recognize Lukashenko's re-election.

Minsk and Moscow insistently denounce that the military expansion of the United States, at the head of its Western allies, near their borders, poses a direct threat to their national security and, therefore, reserve the right to give a forceful response to any aggression or violation of their sovereignty.

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