Limited demonstration – Russian-Belarusian exercises Zapad-2025

The alleged active phase of the Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2025 exercises will take place from 12 to 16 September. According to Lithuanian intelligence, it will be attended by 30,000 soldiers of both states, with 8,000 in the territory of Belarus (including 6,000 Belarusians and 2,000 Russians). Belarusian sources reported that soldiers from the elite Russian units were to train there: 2 ‘Tamanian’ Mechanized Division and 4 ‘Kantemirowska’ Armoured Division, the recently formed 71th Mechanized Division of the 14th Army Corps, and most likely 98th Air-Desant Division, who came to Belarus with full-time equipment in August. Unlike erstwhile editions of the exercises, the tasks are to be carried out mainly on the groundlands in north-eastern Belarus, which Minsk presents as a deescalation motion towards its neighbours.

Zapad-2025 was preceded by exercises organized in Belarus by Collective Operations Force consequence Organisation of the Collective safety Agreement (OUBZ) CIS with the participation of more than 2,000 soldiers from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. They took place from 31 August to 6 September as part of 3 different projects: Co-operation-2025 (essential), Search-2025 and Echelon-2025. According to the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Belarus, General Paul Murawejka during these exercises, allies were to focus on the issue of atomic weapons planning, but only in the staff dimension.

The Zapad-2025 exercises are the first major training task of the FR Armed Forces since the 1990s, which Moscow does not do in information, leaving the full movement to Minsk. A limited scale compared to erstwhile editions does not prejudge their possible usage as preparations for armed action against Ukraine. However, it is more likely that the training subdivisions should be directed to existing sections of the front than they should be utilized to re-enter Ukraine from the territory of Belarus.

Comment

• Zapad-2025 exercises will be importantly smaller than the last editions from 2021 and 2017, however, the scale of the forces and measures active comparable to those organised in the first decade of the 21st century. The issue remains open to the degree to which the Russian participation is due to the request to safe the current activities in Ukraine (and so the deficiency of the anticipation of sending more units) and to what degree Moscow's informed decision to limit the scale of the task – especially the forces thrown to Belarus. The latter, based on the only publically available Lithuanian data, could have been demonstrably increased at the expense of the number of exercises on Russian ground.
• There are no reports of preparations and plans for exercises within Zapad-2025 in Russian fields, especially in the royal circuit. In erstwhile years, they were synchronized with activities in the fields of western Belarus. Currently, information about them is in the residual form and is transmitted mainly by the Ministry of Defence of Belarus and unofficial sources of Belarus.
• The amount of exercises suggested by the Lithuanian intelligence does not prejudge their possible usage by Russia as a direct preparation for activities in Ukraine. It should be remembered that the core of the Russian group, which hit Kiev in February 2022, was in Belarus after the Zapad-2021 exercise was completed. presently Russia has sent to the Belarusian camps training subdivisions from the division active in Ukraine, allowing to presume that they are composed of mostly soldiers from the fresh recruitment. Exercises can be their direct preparation before moving on already active sections of the front, where they will strengthen or change the fighting divisions of the aforementioned division.
• The introduction of atomic planning – even at the level of a public declaration – to the OUBZ exercises is simply a kind of bow to Russia's allies from this organization. Most likely a justification for authorisation OUBZ countries Among the agreeing script of the training usage of atomic weapons were actions for re-nuclearisation of Belarus – directing possible modern means of transportation there: tactical Iskander-M ballistic missiles and (for now in the form of announcements) mid-range ballistic missiles Oriesznik; modernization of atomic ammunition warehouses.
• In agreement with Kremlin Minsk uses exercises to conduct disinformation operations. Its aim is to spread the thesis of Belarus' alleged will to deescalate military threat in the region, although in fact this operation is in favour of Russia's approval and serves to strengthen the image of Alaksandra Lukashenko as an equal partner of Moscow. Already in May, the Minister of Defence of the RB informed about the limitation of the exercise scaleand their location in areas far from the Polish border. This is expected to be a motion signaling the desire to return to dialog with the West, as is the fact that the exercise script only assumes defensive operations in the event of an attack on the Union State.
• Minsk's deescalation rhetoric undermines western concerns over Russia and Belarus' planning of aggressive military actions. This is accompanied by a disinformation operation of the Belarusian side indicating that Poland is supposedly preparing to hit both countries. In order to support this thesis, the Belarusian KGB went to provocation, stopping on 4 September the Polish clergyman under alleged suspicion of espionage and obtaining classified material about the script Zapad-2025.