Reliance on deterrence

Belarus’ Armed Forces have successfully completed combat training tasks as part of the second stage of exercises involving non-strategic nuclear forces

State bodies in Brest Region have been inspected for readiness to respond to acts of terrorism and activities of illegal armed groups during the interagency antiterrorist exercise Burya-Antiterror – 2024 [antiterrorist storm].

Camouflage and buffer zone

The situation escalated by the NATO bloc along the perimeter of Belarus’ borders prevents us from entering the orbit of good neighbourly relations. Thus, Poland has repeatedly closed its border area, having declared a 200-metre buffer zone. The official reason is the alleged refugee crisis. However, the real cause lies deep in military interests.
Warsaw is intensively turning the Polish border area into a line of potential military contact, preparing the population for war and avoiding in every possible way any contacts to enter the bilateral format of protecting common frontiers. This once again confirms Poland’s special interest in the presence of a chronic border problem as the main lever for manipulating the situation in the region.  

Therefore, it looks like our country has received a zone of legal arbitrariness rather than a security zone close to its borders, whose main task is not so much to hide from the world community the brutal methods of treating refugees as to ensure complete secrecy of fortification facilities along the border, including preventive mining of roads and bridges.  

In general, the law enforcement specifics of the buffer zone are initially questionable. After all, even its depth suggests certain conclusions from a military point of view. According to all rules of combined arms warfare, 200 metres is considered to be the most optimal distance for effective density of small arms fire, which infantry or territorial defence forces are armed with. The build-up of offensive contingents and strike resources on the territory of Poland adds more grounds to consider the neighbouring border area as a possible line of assault on Belarus. 
Moreover, a 90-day ban period on staying in the border area introduced by Poland is, oddly enough, as synchronised as possible with the election schedule in the United States. In this regard, it seems that Warsaw is clearly being prepared for some sort of climax in the US election race. In addition, Belarus’ western neighbour is strengthening the military recruitment system, as well as training and working with pre-conscription youth in order to ramp up mobilisation resources and bring the number of troops to the declared 250,000 soldiers. Poland is definitely in the active stage of its army refitting, where the buffer zone acts only as a law enforcement camouflage and disguise for military preparations on the eastern NATO flank.

Vasily Marchuk — diesel electrician. Exercises of air defence forces     YEGOR YERMALITSKIY

Border tensions

The pace of creating a strike force in Lithuania consisting of US and German military contingents with an eye to set up a couple of brigades, including a tank one, cannot be discounted. All of a sudden, Vilnius has introduced universal military conscription so that army recruitment envisages mandatory military service. Now 18-year-old school graduates are required to first become infantrymen for 9 months in order to then get the right to become students.  
Belarus’ southern borders are also in a fever manifested as a mess and drunkenness in the ranks of Ukraine’s Armed Forces and Defence Ministry. Again, it is fairly weird that Paris is involved in this whole situation and even proposed to replace mobilisation reserves of Ukraine’s Armed Forces ‘tired’ of idleness with a large French contingent on Belarus’ borders. In fact, this is another confirmation of NATO forces being surged to the allied borders under any pretext.
The number of the NATO grouping near Belarusian borders is already striving for no less than half a million, which critically exceeds our resources by 5-10 times — both in manpower and in hardware. Moreover, NATO is simultaneously burdened with the ideas of the nuclear paradigm in the potential confrontation between the NATO bloc and Russia. Therefore, Russia’s decision to transfer tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus and jointly develop a non-strategic level of nuclear combat readiness fully meets the realities of threats on the western borders of the Union State of Belarus and Russia.  

This step for Belarus is primarily a desire to match the spirit of the time, which is not easy, frankly speaking. A long absence of such powerful types of weapons at our disposal requires additional efforts to restore the military skills and acumen related to their possible use, maintenance and co-ordination of actions. After all, nuclear weapons are not only a serious deterrent factor at our disposal but also a special level of responsibility.

The Belarusian authorities are aware of the situation unfolding around the country. At the same time, Belarus’ neighbours should come to realise that the current situation is no joke at all. There are no doubts left today that Belarus was literally one step away from a foreign invasion, and only the fear of a retaliatory nuke strike stopped the Western hotheads from that incautious step. Now they are trying by all means to pass our defence strategy off as an offensive in order to justify their actions. At the same time, Belarus’ Armed Forces that have sharpened their skills to use the retaliatory arsenal through combat training exercises is a reality.  

RED LINE

The second stage of drills to practise the deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons has clearly contributed to a better understanding on the part of our opponents. The red line now, at all events, is our state border, which implies that the response to a possible invasion will be decisive. The response sequence will be clear and inevitable — once the red line has been crossed, a powerful counterattack will follow. It is unlikely that the second echelon will help the NATO forces. Moreover, Belarus has already repeatedly worked out the readiness to beef up the joint military grouping for any situation. We will survive everything else and curb any issues and sanctions. The West undoubtedly understands that, that is why it is already possible to discern its desire to avoid sharp corners, even behind its bravado and arrogance. The West is trying to invent existential substitutions at the level of collaborators, mankurts [unthinking slaves; figuratively, people who have lost touch with their ethnic homeland], fugitive extremists and outright terrorists grown in the agent seedbeds of Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian intelligence services.
Belarus is working out the counterterrorism readiness and coherence of the entire state system. The anti-terror forces are maintained in constant combat readiness to ensure that Belarus will not become an easy target in this area, either.
It is true that Belarus is a peaceful country, yet there is huge work behind this calmness carried out by the national security forces. Belarus is open to friends, and even has a visa-free regime with a number of countries, including with our western neighbours.
As for any kind of aggressive actions towards our country, we have envisaged a ‘stopcock’ in all potentially dangerous directions at once. After all, it is not even the availability of nuclear weapons that stops enemies, but the willingness to use them should the time come. In this regard, the more our military forces train, the less hope our opponents have to break us.

By Aleksandr Tishchenko, national security expert