Joint Russian-Belarusian Strategic Military Exercise “Zapad-2025”: Challenges for Ukraine
As part of the organization and conduct of the joint Russian-Belarusian strategic military exercise “Zapad-2025”, which is to be held September 12 through 16, Russian military equipment, ammunition, and personnel were deployed to Belarus in July and August.
The opposition “Community of Belarusian Railwaymen” points out that units of three Russian divisions have already been brought to the country: The 2nd Taman Motorized Rifle Division, the 4th Kantemyr Tank Division, and the 71st Motorized Rifle Division [1].
The first two divisions are part of the 1st Tank Army of the Russian Federation and have been actively involved in the invasion of Ukraine since February 2022 – their units then attacked Chernihiv and Kharkiv. The 71st Division was formed on the basis of the 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade from Pechenga (Murmansk region) which also fought in Kharkiv region.
According to Deputy Minister of Defence of Lithuania T. Godliauskas, the “Zapad – 2025” exercise will be much smaller in scale than in 2021. No more than 30,000 troops can take part in the exercise, of whom some – 6-8,000 – will be in Belarus, several thousands – in Kaliningrad region, and the rest – in units located in the interior of Russia.
The plan of the exercise has been approved: to rehearse an operational episode of confrontation between two coalitions of states: one led by Russia, the other by the notional West. In other words, in military and military-political terms, “Zapad – 2025” is aimed at practicing maneuvers on the western direction of the theater of operations.
According to Major General V. Revenko, the Head of the Department of International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of Defense of Belarus, the following issues are planned to be practiced during the exercise:
- repulsing attacks by enemy air attack means;
- conducting a defensive battle, defeating an enemy that has intervened in the defense, and creating conditions for restoring the territorial integrity of the state;
- aviation support of troops’ actions;
- fighting illegal armed groups and enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups.
Revenko emphasized that “Zapad-2025” exercise is a planned element of joint training of the forces and means of the regional grouping of troops of the Russian Federation and Belarus. However, their “planned defensive nature” is leveled by the statement about practicing the use of nuclear weapons and “Oreshnik” medium-range missiles (without practical use).
According to the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine and the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, there are currently no key indicators of preparation for offensive actions in Belarus: the accumulation of heavy armored vehicles, the deployment of field camps, or the movement of a significant number of troops. Although there is no evidence of the formation of strike groups, which would give grounds to claim that Belarus is a springboard for new Russia’s aggression, the scenario of provocations from Belarusian territory should not be ruled out. For this purpose, the fighters of the private military company “Wagner” (approximately 4 to 5 thousand) who remained in Belarus, where they participate in joint exercises with the Belarusian military, perform training and security tasks, in particular, at the Brest training ground near the border with Poland and Ukraine, could be involved. Given their combat experience, motivation, and potential readiness for action, Russia could use the Wagnerians to create instability on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border.
In order to strengthen the southern section of the border with Ukraine, Belarus is forming the 37th Separate Air Assault Guards Brigade of Special Operations Forces, which will first of all cover the border and will be equipped with significant electronic warfare capabilities. Thus, Belarus is creating a mobile strike force in the immediate vicinity of the border with Ukraine. On the one hand, the creation of such a unit can be seen as an escalation on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, while on the other hand, the combat capability of the Belarusian Armed Forces to conduct an offensive with the creation of this new brigade is unlikely to increase significantly.
In the general context, it is worth considering that in 2025 Belarus has increased defense spending, which is planned to amount to 4.73 billion rubles, of which 4.47 billion will be allocated to defense and the Armed Forces, and almost 145 million rubles will be spent on mobilization training and mobilization. National defense expenditures are increasing by 1.15 billion rubles compared to 2024 [2].
At the moment, Belarus is accelerating the creation of its own scientific and industrial base for the design and production of missiles. It seeks to expand its arsenal of missile weapons by creating longer-range (over 300 km) weapons based on the existing (“Polonez”) or new platform. At this, Minsk is acting in Russia’s interests.
In Belarus, legal grounds have been formed to expand the functions of the Armed Forces in peacetime, which are laid down in the draft law “On Amendments to Laws on Military Security and Defense” [3]. In particular, the tasks of the Armed Forces of Belarus are:
- “participation in ensuring the military security of the Republic of Belarus, including the implementation of preventive measures to eliminate the military threat”;
- “participation in preventing the outbreak of an internal armed conflict, and in case of its outbreak – in its settling”;
- “protection of the state border of the Republic of Belarus in the airspace”;
- “constant readiness to use the allocated forces and means in order to eliminate crisis situations that may lead to the outbreak of armed conflicts on the territory of the Republic of Belarus or the states allied with the Republic of Belarus”;
- “Prevention (localization) of armed incidents (actions, provocations), including border incidents”;
- “participation in ensuring interaction with other troops and military formations, paramilitary organizations of martial law, state of emergency”.
In fact, this draft law creates legal grounds for the “preventive” use of the Armed Forces of Belarus outside its own territory in peacetime without declaring martial law. Besides, this draft law blurs the boundaries between peacetime and wartime, which reproduces the relevant provisions of Russian doctrinal documents, as well as the Treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus on Security Guarantees of the Union State of 13.03.2025 [4].
The potential threat of the Belarusian armed forces being drawn into offensive actions under Russia’s pressure remains, despite assurances that the exercise poses no danger to Ukraine, the Baltic states, or Poland. According to the statement of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “we remember the bitter experience and the price of the false statements of the Russian and Belarusian dictators. The accumulation of Russian troops on the borders of Ukraine in 2021-2022 took place under the guise of the joint military exercise of Russia and Belarus “Zapad-2021” [5].
Besides, it should be borne in mind that the deployment of Russian troops in the country as part of “Zapad-2025” exercise will leave the Belarusian leadership no choice if Moscow decides to refuse to withdraw some of these troops, citing the need to “ensure the security of the Union State in a difficult international situation”.
Maria Hutsalo,
expert, PhD in Political Science
Sources used:
[1] https://belzhd.info/military-transportation/voinskie-perevozki-po-bzhd-s-4-po-9-avgusta-2025-goda-v-ramkah-uchenij-zapad-2025/
[2] https://pravo.by/document/?guid=12551&p0=H12400048
[3] https://pravo.by/document/?guid=3941&p0=2025039001
[4] https://bintel.org.ua/analytics/geopolitics/garanti%d1%97-bezpeki/
[5] https://mfa.gov.ua/news/zayava-mzs-shchodo-zaplanovanih-vijskovih-navchan-na-teritoriyi-respubliki-bilorus
