MOSCOW – Russia and Belarus will rehearse repelling an external attack when they hold joint military drills in Belarus next month, both sides said on Tuesday, at a time of acute tensions with the West over neighbouring Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Russian military forces and hardware began arriving in ex-Soviet Belarus on Monday for the “Allied Resolve” drills to be held near Belarus’s western border with NATO members Poland and Lithuania, and close to its southern flank with Ukraine.
“The goal of the exercise is to fine-tune the tasks of suppressing and repelling external aggression during a defencive operation, countering terrorism and protecting the interests of the Union State (Russia and Belarus),” the Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Russian Defence Minister Alexander Fomin as saying.
The Belarusian Defence Ministry said that in the first phase of the drills, which runs until Feb. 9, both sides will rehearse deploying troops, defending military facilities and assessing their troops’ air defence capabilities.
In the second phase of the exercises, which will be from Feb. 10-20, Russian and Belarusian troops will go over “destroying illegal armed formations and the enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups,” the ministry said.
