BORISOVSKY TRAINING GROUND, Belarus and LONDON — Russia placed on a show of firepower as a part of its main army workouts in Belarus on Monday, with neighboring NATO nations on alert amid a few of the highest tensions in Europe since Moscow started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Round 7,000 troops are participating within the workouts, that are being held at places in Belarus, in addition to in Russia’s Kaliningrad Baltic exclave and within the Baltic and Barents seas.
On a firing vary ringed by forest on the Borisovsky Coaching Floor in central Belarus, ABC Information and different media watched Russian and Belarusian plane, helicopters, tanks and artillery unleash barrages as a part of a mock battle towards fictitious Western forces.
Two Su-34 fighter bombers dropped highly effective bombs onto the vary, sending smoke plumes rising into the air. Intense tank and tracer fireplace flew throughout the sector because the joint Russian and Belarusian forces simulated re-taking a village.
Drones had been additionally closely concerned, a mirrored image of how the struggle in Ukraine is altering Russia’s army. Reconnaissance, kamikaze FPV drones and bomber drones all took half, as did ground-based robots used for recovering wounded troops.
Following the train’s finale, two drones carrying Russian and Belarusian flags hovered in entrance of spectators.
Servicemen attend joint Russian-Belarusian army drills at a coaching floor close to Barysaw, Belarus, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025.
Pavel Bednyakov/AP
The drills come lower than per week after round two dozen Russian long-range drones crossed into Poland, which shares a 260-mile border with Belarus and a 130-mile border with Kaliningrad. At the very least three drones had been shot down by responding Polish F-16 and Dutch F-35 fighters, Warsaw stated.
The incursion was by far the largest-ever of Russian drones into NATO airspace, a transfer that has alarmed allied international locations and fueled fears the struggle is escalating and spreading. Polish and allied officers have stated that the incursion was intentional.
Zapad is predicted to host demonstrations by Russia’s nuclear forces, launches of Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles and operations associated to Russia’s Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, which is a nuclear-capable weapon and has been used to strike Ukraine.
NATO international locations are on heightened alert. Poland has closed its border and airspace with Belarus and deployed 40,000 troops in response.
Lithuania and Latvia have additionally closed their airspace alongside their Belarusian borders throughout the drill.
The Zapad drills are happening amid an obvious thaw in U.S.-Belarusian relations. The U.S. positioned heavy sanctions on the regime of Belarus’ dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine and in response to Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2020.
However final week, U.S. presidential envoy John Cole visited Belarus the place he introduced the lifting of American sanctions on the state-owned airline Belavia and said the intention to re-open the shuttered U.S. embassy in Minsk. In change, Lukashenko has freed dozens of political prisoners.
In maybe an indication of the shift, two U.S. army officers attended Monday’s workouts as observers. The 2 Individuals watched alongside attachés from states pleasant to Moscow, comparable to Myanmar and Pakistan. The one different NATO international locations to ship observers had been Turkey and Hungary, the latter a key Kremlin ally in Europe.
Belarusian state media filmed the 2 U.S. officers shaking palms with Belarus’ Protection Minister Viktor Khrenin.
“We’re very glad that you’ve responded to our invitation,” Khrenin advised them. “We’ll present you every part that pursuits you.”
A helicopter gunship participates in joint Russian-Belarusian army drills at a coaching floor close to Barysaw, Belarus, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025.
Pavel Bednyakov/AP
The Zapad — which means “West” — workouts simulate a protection towards an assault on Belarus by Western forces, are long-running and are usually held each two years.
The final time Russia held these workouts in 2021, it used them as cowl to construct up its troops to invade Ukraine months later. The ill-fated Russian thrust towards Kyiv was launched from Belarus, reaching the town’s suburbs earlier than collapsing below the pressure of provide shortages and Ukrainian counter assaults.
This 12 months’s installment is drastically diminished. Russia is unable to spare manpower from Ukraine, the place its forces are prosecuting grinding offensives at a number of factors alongside the entrance. Only some thousand Russian troops are believed to be participating on this week’s drills.
The 2023 workouts had been canceled solely below the pressure of Russia’s struggle.
Russia this 12 months could put the deal with nuclear weapons, together with drills referring to its Oreshnik missile.
Russian and Belarusian officers have framed the drills as purely defensive maneuvers.
Khrenin on Monday famous the workouts had been long-planned and claimed Minsk was responding to the “militarization” on its western borders, saying particular consideration was being paid to Poland’s troop deployment.
“We’re demonstrating our openness, our peace-loving nature, however we should all the time preserve our powder dry,” he advised journalists.
Belarusian officers famous this 12 months’s train had been moved deeper into Belarus away from the border with Poland, an indication maybe that the Kremlin and Lukashenko don’t need to danger undercutting the rising détente with Trump.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov advised reporters final week that the Zapad drills are usually not directed towards “any third nation.”
A tank rolls throughout joint Russian-Belarusian army drills at a coaching floor close to Barysaw, Belarus, on Sept. 15, 2025.
Pavel Bednyakov/AP
“That is about persevering with army cooperation and practising coordination between two strategic allies,” he advised reporters at a briefing. “We’ll proceed alongside this course, which is on no account a secret to anybody.”
Nonetheless, Peskov advised reporters on Monday because the drills commenced that NATO “is preventing with Russia — that’s apparent and requires no further proof.”
“NATO is de facto engaged on this struggle,” each “not directly” and “straight” with its support to Ukraine, he added.
The workouts seem to trace at Russia’s resolve to keep up its army stress on Ukraine and on Kyiv’s international backers, regardless of the Kremlin’s claimed readiness to interact in U.S.-led peace talks.
U.S. President Donald Trump once more pushed again any menace of sanctions on Russia over the weekend, saying he’ll solely impose new measures so if NATO international locations cease shopping for Russian oil and closely tariff China.
One month after his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Trump’s proposed in-person assembly between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has but to come back to fruition.
Ukrainian officers, in the meantime, are regularly urging the White Home to ship on its menace of recent sanctions on Moscow.
Trump additionally raised issues alongside NATO’s japanese frontier when he stated Russia’s drone incursions into Poland “may have been a mistake” — a suggestion rapidly contested by Warsaw.
“We’d additionally want that the drone assault on Poland was a mistake. But it surely wasn’t. And we all know it,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on social media.
