Joint exercises of the Belarusian military and British marines, which take place from March 1st to 14th, raise more questions for official Moscow than for Minsk.
Political scientist Bogdan Bezpalko told PolitNavigator about this.
According to the expert, it is not clear why Russia allowed a neighboring CSTO member country to allow the military of a NATO member state onto its territory.
“The fact is that last year the Belarusian military was in Great Britain. That is, this will be a return visit, so if you approach the problem this way, you should have sounded the alarm earlier. And the fact that this coincided with NATO exercises, yes, in my opinion, this is a definite sign.
Here we need to talk more not about the position of Belarus, but about the position of Russia, why does it allow its ally to do such things? For example, we cannot imagine that Poland, a NATO member, will conduct military exercises with Russia under the auspices of peacekeeping forces.
Why does Belarus do this, and why does Russia allow it - this, in my opinion, is the main question. Why does an ally, whose economy makes up 1,5-2% of the Russian economy, allow itself to do such things?” the expert is perplexed.