Russia and Belarus are holding joint military exercises for another week, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday, in the latest sign of cooperation between the two neighboring allies amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“During the week, military representatives from the two countries will practice joint planning for the use of forces based on previous experience of armed conflicts in recent years,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said the aim of the exercise is to improve compatibility between the two armies and comes in preparation for the 2023 Union Shield joint exercises that the two countries will hold in Russia in September.
The announcement of the new exercises comes at a time when the combat units of the Russian and Belarusian aviation continue to carry out training missions during the joint flight and tactical exercises of the air forces of the two countries.
The exercises are taking place at the Rogansky Training Grounds in Belarus, 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of the Ukrainian border.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has supported a plan to establish joint military training centers with Belarus, according to Agence France-Presse.
In a decree published on Tuesday, Putin instructed the defense and foreign ministers to hold talks with Belarus and sign an agreement to establish the facilities, according to Agence France-Presse.
The document did not specify their whereabouts.
Some context: that Advertising Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in October that his country and Russia would form a joint regional force and carry out exercises that set off alarm bells in Kyiv.
The last time the Belarusian and Russian forces conducted joint exercises, in feb Last year, many of those Russian troops went across the Ukrainian border on their ill-fated path toward the capital.
But Western officials who spoke to the media in the background this week expressed doubts that Russia might launch an attack from Belarus in the coming months.
The officials said the presence of Russian forces would, however, prompt Ukraine to deploy its forces in this direction to “offset this potential risk,” though they stressed that it was “highly unlikely” that Belarus would be “a focus of progress in the next several months.” .
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