MINSK, November 23. /TASS/. Ministry of Defense of Belarus is concerned over increasingly frequent sorties of NATO aviation near its borders, Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said on Belarusian TV Monday.
"We see increasingly frequent sorties of [NATO] combat and recon aviation. This year, we particularly note sorties of the B-52 strategic bombers from the continental US within 30 kilometers from our border," the Minister said.
Khrenin also said that Belarus notes "significantly more frequent and intensive training events in the neighboring countries".
The Minister noted that "the very presence of armed forces, of understanding of these forces’ building and development, of combat readiness and training events - this is itself a complex of measures on deterrence of potential external threat and a display of a country’s readiness to deflect them."
"This is being done within the scheduled drills, various training involving the state control bodies, the armed forces and the allies," the Minister said.
"We are able to amass a required amount of forces at any swath of the [strategic] direction within a short timeframe," Khrenin said.
According to the Defense Minister, a major work has been done during the past 10 years, including establishment of immediate response forces.
"The forces are ready to carry out tasks both in the ground forces, air force, and air defense forces. Intelligence, radio-technical forces do not sleep, too. This is our response to the processes in the neighboring states," the Minister of Defense said.