Borisovsky training in the training field, Belarus and London-Russia presented a sample of fire power as part of its main military exercises in Belarus on Monday, with the neighboring nations of NATO alert in the midst of the highest tensions in Europe since Moscow began its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Around 7,000 troops participate in the exercises, which are carried out in places of Belarus, as well as in the Kaliningrado Baltic Exclravo of Russia and in the Baltic and Barents seas.
In a shooting mountain range surrounded by the forest in the Borisovsky training field in the center of Belarus, ABC News and other media saw Russian and berousy airplanes, helicopters, tanks and artillery unleash the barriers as part of a simulated battle against the fictional western forces.
Two Su-34 combat bombers threw powerful pumps into the range, sending smoke columns that rose in the air. The intense tank and the tracer fire flew through the field while the Russian and Belaruse joint forces simulated that they took a village again.
The drones were also very involved, a reflection of how the war in Ukraine is altering Russia’s army. The recognition, Kamikaze FPV drones and bomber drones participated, as did the terrestrial robots used to recover wounded troops.
After the end of the exercise, two drones that transported Russian and Belarusa flags hovered in front of the spectators.
The military attend the joint military exercises of Belarusia in a training camp near Barysaw, Belarus, on Monday, September 15, 2025.
PAVEL BEDNYAKOV/AP
The drills arrive less than a week after about two dozen long -range Russian drones crossed in Poland, which shares a 260 mile border with bellruse and a 130 -mile edge with kaliningrad. At least three drones were shot down when responding to F-16 Poles and Dutch f-35 fighters, Warsaw said.
The incursion was, with much, the largest of Russian drones in NATO airspace, a movement that has alarmed the allied countries and fed fears that the war will intensify and spread. Poles and allied officials have said that the incursion was intentional.
Zapad organizes manifestations of the nuclear forces of Russia, missile launches and zircon hypersonic cruise operations related to the intermediate range of intermediate rank of Russia, which is a weapon with nuclear capacity and has been used to attack Ukraine.
NATO countries are on augmented alert. Poland has closed its border and airspace with Belarus and has deployed 40,000 troops in response.
Lithuania and Latvia have also closed their airspace along their berousing borders during the lens of the drill.
Zapad’s drills are being carried out in the midst of an apparent thaw in relations between the United States and Bellaras. The United States imposed strong sanctions on the scourge dictator regime, Alexander Lukashenko, after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine and in response to the brutal repression of Lukashenko against prime -democratic protests in 2020.
But last week, the presidential envoy of the United States, John Cole, visited Belarus, where he announced the uprising of US sanctions to state airline Belavia and declared the intention of reopening the US Embassy. Uu. In Minsk. In return, Lukashenko has released dozens of political prisoners.
Perhaps in a sign of the turn, two American military officers attended Monday’s exercises as observers. The two Americans observed together with the attachments of friendly states to Moscow, such as Myanmar and Pakistan. The only other NATO countries who sent observers were Türkiye and Hungary, the latter a Kremlin key ally in Europe.
Belarusian state media filmed the two US officers who shake hands with Belarus Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin.
“We are very happy that you have responded to our invitation,” Khrenin told them. “We will show you everything that interests you.”
A helicopter gunpoint participates in joint military drills by Belarusian Belarusian in a training camp near Barysaw, Belarus, on Monday, September 15, 2025.
PAVEL BEDNYAKOV/AP
The Zapad, which means “West”, the exercises simulate a defense against an attack against Belarusia by Western forces, are long -lasting and normally they are carried out every two years.
The last time Russia performed these exercises in 2021, used them as coverage to build their troops to invade Ukraine months later. The unfortunate Russian impulse to kyiv was launched from Belarus, reaching the suburbs of the city before collapsing under the tension of supply scarcity and Ukrainian counterattacks.
This year’s delivery is drastically diminished. Russia cannot save Ukraine labor, where their forces are processing offensive at multiple points along the front. Only a few thousand Russian troops participate in this week’s exercises.
The 2023 exercises were completely canceled under the tension of the Russian war.
Russia this year can focus on nuclear weapons, including drills related to their Oreshnik missile.
Russian and Belarusal officials have framed exercises as purely defensive maneuvers.
The quhrenina pointed out on Monday that the exercises were planned and said that Minsk was responding to “militarization” at its western borders, saying that special attention was being paid to the deployment of Poland’s troops.
“We are demonstrating our openness, our peace -loving nature, but we must always maintain our dry dust,” he told reporters.
Belaruse officials noticed that this year’s exercise had moved deeper in Belarusia away from the border with Poland, a signal perhaps that the Kremlin and Lukashenko do not want to risk undermining the growing dirt with Trump.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists last week that Zapad’s drills are not aimed at “any third country.”
A tank rolls during the joint military exercises of Belarusia in a training field near Barysaw, Belarus, on September 15, 2025.
PAVEL BEDNYAKOV/AP
“It’s about continuing military cooperation and practicing coordination between two strategic allies,” journalists told journalists in an informative session. “We will continue in this course, which is not a secret to anyone.”
Even so, Peskov told journalists on Monday when the drills began that NATO “is fighting with Russia, that is obvious and does not require additional evidence.”
“NATO is de facto committed to this war,” both “indirectly” and “directly” with its help to Ukraine, he added.
The exercises seem to hint Russia’s resolution to maintain his military pressure on Ukraine and about kyiv’s foreign sponsors, despite the Kremlin preparation to participate in peace conversations led by the United States.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, returned to withdraw any threat of sanctions to Russia during the weekend, saying that it will only impose new measures, so that NATO countries stop buying Russian oil and largely China.
A month after his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, the meeting in person proposed by Trump between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not yet been completed.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials continually urge the White House to fulfill their threat of new sanctions against Moscow.
Trump also raised concerns along the NATO eastern border when he said that Russian drones raids in Poland “could have been a mistake,” a suggestion quickly challenged by Warsaw.
“We would also want the drone attack against Poland to be an error. But it was not. And we know it,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on social networks.
