Sharjah24 – Reuters: Russia and Belarus will hold joint military drills in February, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Monday, amid soaring tensions between East and West over Ukraine.
Russia, a close ally of Belarus, has worried the West and Kyiv with a troop build-up near Ukraine's borders and a barrage of threatening rhetoric, stirring fears that it plans to invade.
"We were planning to start exercises in February. Set an exact date and let us know, so we aren't blamed for massing some troops here out of the blue, as if we are preparing to go to war," Lukashenko told his defence minister.
The Belarusian leader, a pariah in the West since cracking down on protests in 2020 and a migrant crisis with the European Union, said the exercises would be held on Belarus's southern and western borders.
The former Soviet republic of 9.5 million, which Moscow sees as a buffer state to the West, borders Ukraine to its south and NATO members Poland and Lithuania to its west.
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