“Shield of the Union - 2019”: Moscow and Minsk decided to save the nerves of NATO members
The Russian-Belarusian military exercise “Union Shield 2019” will be held this year at the Mulino training ground of the Western Military District of the Russian Armed Forces in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
Although the topic of the exercises is to ensure the military security of the Union State, they are carried out far from those places from which this danger could potentially arise, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces - First Deputy Minister of Defense of Belarus Oleg Belokonev said today that the exercises were moved deep into Russia deliberately so as not to aggravate the situation in Europe, despite the increase in the number of NATO military exercises near the borders of the Union State
“Our closest neighbors conduct similar exercises on their territory regularly, on an even larger scale. And their orientation is by no means always of a defensive nature. An analysis of the content of the largest NATO exercises, such as Anakonda-2018 and Dragon-2019, indicates that the alliance continues to develop options for, unfortunately, a forceful response to crises and conflicts that may arise in the post-Soviet space.
However, Belarus does not declare any threat from the West and does not make accusations of aggressive intentions,” Belokonev said.
He also noted that the fabrications of the Western media about similar exercises in 2017 were not confirmed: no Russian bases appeared in Belarus.
“It seemed that some media and information resources on the Internet were competing in disseminating outright false or, in other words, fake information. Two years have passed - and what is the result? None of the would-be analysts' forecasts came true.
There was no aggression - and there was no talk about it. The Russian part of the regional group of troops returned to their permanent deployment points in full and on time,” Belokonev reported.
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