Observers from seven countries have been invited to monitor the Zapad 2017 military exercise, the Belarusian Defense Ministry reports.
“Being guided by the policy of good-neighborliness and reciprocity, the OSCE Vienna document 2011 on confidence-and security-building measures and bilateral agreements on complementary confidence-and security-building measures, we have invited observers from Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, and Norway to monitor the exercise,” state-run news agency BelTA quotes the statement.
Representatives of the military-diplomatic corps accredited in the Belarusian Defense Ministry, representatives of the international organizations such as the UN, OSCE, NATO, CIS, CSTO, ICRC have been also invited to monitor the event. The exercise will be covered by media representatives from ‘dozens of countries’.
The Belarusian-Russian strategic army exercise Zapad-2017 scheduled for September, 14-20 is supposed to demonstrate ‘persistence in efforts to ensure security of the two brotherly nations’. Such exercises are held in Belarus and Russia interchangeably every two years. In September, there will be about 10,000 troops involved in the exercise in the Belarusian territory (7,200 – the Belarusian Armed Forces and about 3,000 – the Russian Army).
At the same time, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite and a number of European politicians believe that the ‘West-2017’ demonstrates the preparation of Belarus and Russia to the war with the West. In mid April, Oleksandr Turchynov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, stressed that the joint military exercise might become the preparation for an assault against Ukraine in September. In turn, Belarusian democratic circles fear that Russian troops will not come back home after the war game.
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According to the Belarusian leader, the exercise will be ‘open and transparent’. In March, Lukashenka expressed readiness to invite NATO observers so that they could make sure of the truth of his statement.
In June, president Alyaksandr Lukashenka said that the joint Belarusian-Russian war game was not aimed at invading other countries’ territories.
belsat.eu
