Command and staff exercises will be held in Belarus, the Armed Forces are ready for any course of events — General Staff

From September 8 to 14, command and staff exercises will be held in Belarus, during which Belarusians plan to work out the issue of liberating the conditional temporarily occupied territories and crossing the state border for the first time.

This was announced at a briefing on September 1 by Oleksii Hromov, the Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reports Interfax-Ukraine.

He noted that the probability of an enemy offensive from the territory of Belarus or an invasion of Belarusian troops into Ukraine remains low. At the same time, exercises will be held in the period from September 8 to 14, during which the main attention will probably be paid to issues of conducting a maneuverable defense with a subsequent transition to a counteroffensive and the liberation of territories temporarily captured by the enemy.

“The planning of joint actions will be carried out as part of a multinational grouping on the territory of the Republic of Belarus with the participation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and CSTO1member countries,” Hromov said.

According to him, the idea of the command and staff exercise envisages the liberation of part of the lost territory of the conditional state.

“It is possible that the so-called lost territory refers to the border areas of Volyn, Rivne, and Zhytomyr Oblasts. This corresponds to the concept of joint actions of the armed forces of the so-called allied state in the Ukrainian direction. But the Armed Forces of Ukraine are ready for any course of events, including in the northern part of our country,” emphasizes Hromov.

Participation of Belarus in the War

Belarus did not send its troops to Ukraine but provided its territory for Russian troops that are shelling Ukraine. The General Staff of the Armed Forces reported that Russian occupiers who were exposed to radiation at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant are being treated in Belarus. The self-proclaimed president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, actively supports Putin's policies.

In mid-June, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had instructed four Oblasts to check their readiness for a possible re-invasion from Belarus.

Oleksandr Motuzianyk, the spokesman of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said that the Ukrainian military has not yet recorded the formation of any offensive Russian group on the territory of Belarus, but is closely monitoring the situation. At the same time, intelligence warned about the preparation of sabotage and reconnaissance groups.

The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) informed that the self-proclaimed president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is likely to continue giving Russia access to Belarusian airspace. However, analysts believe that the probability of direct participation of Belarus in the war in Ukraine is low - all because this participation can affect the stability and even the survival of the Lukashenko regime.

1CSTO is amilitary-political international organization, which includes Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, andTajikistan.