President Alyaksandr Lukashenka tasked State Secretary of the Security Council Stanislau Zas and Defense Minister Andrey Raukou to develop an action plan to provide an adequate response to the deployment of armoured vehicles and U.S. armed forces not far from Belarus.
As reported earlier, more than half a thousand American soldiers will live in the area of the Lithuanian military training ground in Pabrade, 15 km from the Belarusian-Lithuanian border. The U.S. battalion will be there until spring 2020.
In these settings, the Belarusian side cannot be a ‘simple observer’, Stanislau Zas said. He promised that corresponding proposals proposals would be worked out and reported to Alyaksandr Lukashenka soon.
Belarus is also concerned about the forthcoming NATO exercise Defender Europe scheduled for the spring of 2020. The exercise is expected to take place in ten European countries, including Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia; 40,000 military from 18 countries being involved. The redeployment of troops from the USA to the European continent on a massive scale will be practiced as part of the exercise, the state secretary of the Security Council of Belarus stressed.
“It is important to understand the background the exercise will be held in. All of us can see growing tensions between centres of power. Unfortunately, a return to the policy of militarization, a policy of the arms race is in progress. Military spending has been on the rise in all the neighboring countries for the last few years,” state-run news agency BelTA quotes Zas.
belsat.eu, following BelTA
