Belarus will host the “Brotherhood in Arms” exercises of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a post-Soviet military alliance led by Russia, from September 1 to 6, the Secretary General of the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced today.
One of the objectives of the exercises is the active use of unmanned aerial vehicles [‘drones’]as well as measures to counter its use by the opposing side,” General Anatoly Sidorov said according to TASS.
The CSTO, the acronym in English of the organization, integrates Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Sidorov told the Russian news agency TASS that representatives from China and Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia and Mongolia, had been invited as observers.
The Russian official did not rule out a future expansion of the alliance, as happened at the BRICS summit (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), where six new countries were accepted as members.
Nor was it ruled out the possibility of extending the list of observer states.
“Basically we are ready [para aceitar] countries in Latin America, Africa and other continents,” he said, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.
The announcement came on a day when Britain’s Ministry of Defense admitted it was likely that Russia had canceled a major military exercise scheduled for September due to a lack of resources due to the war against Ukraine.
“Russia probably canceled Zapad-23 because available troops and equipment are too scarce,” the ministry said in a report on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, based on an assessment by British military intelligence.
In the report published on social media, the ministry described Zapad as “a major annual event, conceived as the culmination of the year of military training”, which in 2021 was “the largest Russian exercise since the Soviet era”.
Moscow decided to hold military exercises with Belarus in the western part of Russia at least every two years because it “prioritised confronting what it considers to be the threat of NATO,” the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Approximately 200,000 military personnel participated in Zapad-21, held between September 10 and 15, 2021, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
After Zapad-21, troops from both countries participated in exercises that ended on February 20, 2022, four days before the invasion of Ukraine.
According to the British ministry, the “weak performance” of the Russian forces in Ukraine showed that the exercises with Belarus had “limited training value” and “served largely to put on a show”.
According to the ministry’s assessment, there is “a realistic possibility that Russian leaders are also sensitive to internal criticism emanating from the management” of yet another large-scale wartime exercise.
In addition to Russia and Ukraine, Belarus shares borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, three NATO member states and the European Union (EU).
Ukraine has relied on financial and arms support from Western allies to counter the Russian invasion.
Kiev’s allies have also imposed sanctions on Moscow to try to reduce its ability to fund Ukraine’s war effort.
The official number of civilian and military casualties from the conflict is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, admit it will be high.
Source: DN
