MINSK, August 27. /TASS/. The upcoming Russia-Belarus strategic joint drills Zapad 2025 are strictly defensive in nature, Belarusian Security Council State Secretary Alexander Volfovich said on Wednesday.
"A lot has already been said by our head of state and the senior staff of the [Belarusian] Defense Ministry that the exercise [Zapad 2025] is regular and takes place once every two years. These drills have no offensive goals," the state-run BelTA news agency quoted the security official as saying.
"In neighboring countries, exercises are conducted with purely offensive objectives," he continued. "Our drills pursue a solely defensive goal: to protect the [Russia-Belarus] Union State," he stressed.
All the maneuvers of the Zapad 2025 strategic drills have been moved deep into Belarusian territory to ease tension, although the initial plan envisaged involving actually all the training grounds in the western Brest and Grodno regions, Volfovich explained.
"Meanwhile, our neighbors have deployed a military grouping at training grounds near our border for drills in response to our well-wishing rhetoric," he noted. "For example, today over 1,000 troops are stationed at the Pabrade training ground just 15 kilometers from our border. How should we respond to this?"
"Additional aviation units have been relocated to airfields in Poland and the Baltic states, where over 148 aircraft are now stationed. Other activities are also underway that cause concern and, perhaps, pursue the goal of provoking us into retaliatory measures," the official stressed.
"But we are sensible people and will not provoke anyone. We are monitoring the situation and are prepared to give a firm rebuff to any ill-wishers, if they venture to make an incursion into our territory. We will not give up our land: we will defend it to our last breath, as our ancestors did," Volfovich added.
The joint Russian-Belarusian Zapad 2025 drills will run between September 12 and 16 in Belarus and focus on ensuring the Union State’s military security. The Russian and Belarusian troops will practice repelling air strikes and fighting saboteurs along with planning the use of nuclear weapons and Oreshnik hypersonic missile systems.