The Russian and Belarusian armies Thursday began a 10-day exercise in
Belarusamid tensions between Russia and Western countries on Ukraine and the diplomatic efforts being made to defuse the crisis.
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The Russian-Belarusian exercises “are carried out with the aim of preparing to stop and repel external aggression as part of a defensive operation,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
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The movement of soldiers was denounced by Ukraine as a means of “psychological pressure” from the Russian government, which has concentrated since November more than 100,000 soldiers on the borders of Ukraine.
“We believe that the accumulation of troops near our borders is a means of psychological pressure from our neighbors,” Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky was quoted as saying in a presidential statement.
France considered that the maneuvers are “a gesture of great violence” that “concerns”. “There is a lot of maneuvering, particularly on the border with Ukraine,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on France Inter public radio.
The Russian military deployment in Belarus and on the border with Ukraine represents a dangerous moment for the security of Europe
Russia is accused of being ready to carry out a new military operation against Ukraine, after the annexation of Crimea in 2014accusations rejected by the Kremlin, which says it wants to guarantee its security in the face of the hostile behavior of Kiev and NATO.
On a diplomatic level, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will receive the leaders of the Baltic countries, former Soviet member republics of NATO, in Berlin on Thursday.
The Russian Ministry of Defense indicated that the military exercises will be held until February 20 in five military camps, four air bases and “several places” in Belarus, particularly in the Brest region, which borders Ukraine.
The Russian and Belarusian militaries have not disclosed the number of troops taking part in the exercises, but the United States has said Russia planned to send 30,000 troops to various regions of Belarus.
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In a statement this Thursday, the Russian army specified only that they were deployed S-400 anti-aircraft systems in the Brest region.
diplomatic efforts
The tensions have provoked an intense diplomatic effort to find a way out of the crisis. French President Emmanuel Macron visited Moscow on Monday and Kiev on Tuesday.
Macron said he had received from Russian President Vladimir Putin guarantees that he would not be the cause of a greater “escalation” and that the Russian troops currently deployed in Belarus will leave as planned once the maneuvers are over.
“Ultimatums and threats lead nowhere,” but “many of our Western colleagues love this way (of communicating),” the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, said Thursday at the start of his meeting with Truss. .
The head of the diplomacy of Poland – an ally of Ukraine -, Zbigniew Rau, is in Kiev this Thursday to negotiate.
In parallel, the Ukrainian military began its own exercises across the territory, including the use of Turkish combat drones and anti-tank missiles supplied by the UK and the US.
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In case of an attack, Western countries have threatened Russia with greater economic sanctions that will be added to those imposed in 2004 after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
This annexation was followed by the start of a conflict in eastern Ukraine between the government and Russian-backed separatists, a war that has claimed more than 13,000 lives in eight years, according to the UN, and continues despite the 2015 peace accords.
Russia denies that it seeks to destabilize its pro-Western neighbor and maintains that it only wants to defend itself against NATO, which Ukraine wants to join.
For this reason, Russia demands the end of NATO’s enlargement policy, the commitment not to deploy offensive weapons near Russian borders and the withdrawal of the Alliance’s military infrastructure to the 1997 borders, that is, before the organization welcomed former members of the Soviet bloc.
The United States, which has sent military reinforcements to Eastern Europe, rejected those demands but left the door open for discussions on other issues, such as the deployment of missiles or the reciprocal limitation of military maneuvers.
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NATO warnings
The Russian military deployment in Belarus and on the border with Ukraine represents a “dangerous moment” for the security of Europewarned this Thursday in Brussels the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Jens Stoltenberg.
“This is a dangerous time for European security … We are going to defend and protect all our allies,” Stoltenberg told a news conference alongside British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
According to Stoltenberg, “further Russian aggression (against Ukraine) will bring about a strengthening of NATO’s presence, not a diminution.”
“We are closely monitoring Russia’s deployment in Belarus, which is the largest since the end of the Cold War,” added the head of the transatlantic military alliance.
Stoltenberg and Johnson warned that NATO was preparing to deploy more forces in its partner states in Eastern Europe, such as Poland and Romania.
AFP
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