MINSK, July 1. /TASS/. The Defender Europe 2025 series of NATO military drills is taking place so dangerously close to Belarus that it is actually on its soil, BelTA news agency cited Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as saying on Tuesday.

"You know that a series of war games Defender Europe 2025 is taking place on our doorstep," Lukashenko said at a solemn assembly held on July 1 in anticipation of Independence Day.

"The scale and the proximity to the military exercise is intimidating: 25,000 NATO military personnel according to their own statements and about 3,000 units of weaponry and materiel literally 10-15 kilometers away from our border," he noted.

"It is not even within the distance of one rush. It is practically in our land. And we see these ‘defenders’ with an offensive scenario in all their glory," Lukashenko continued.

"And we are not going to respond to the aggressive demonstration of force. We are doing everything to reduce tensions in the region," the Belarusian president stated.

According to him, this was reason why the parameters and the scale of the joint Belarusian-Russian drills dubbed "Zapad-2025" (or West-2025) have been adjusted.

"We’ve reduced the number of personnel practically by half. We’ve relocated their emplacement location deep into our territory. By hundreds of kilometers away from the border," Lukashenko added.

The joint Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2025 drills will take place in mid-September. The two countries’ militaries plan to practice ways to repel an act of aggression against the Union State of Russia and Belarus.