US military officers made a surprise visit to observe joint war games between Russia and Belarus on Monday and were encouraged by Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin to look at “whatever is of interest to you.”
In a video released on Telegram by the Belarusian Defense Ministry, two uniformed US officers thank Khrenin for the invitation in Russian and shake his hand.
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In the clip Khrenin tells his visitors: “We will show whatever is of interest to you. Whatever you want. You can go there and see, talk to people.”
“Who would have thought how the morning of another day of the Zapad-2025 (West-2025) exercise would begin?” a statement accompanying the video said, adding that “the handshake between Belarus and the US at the military training ground was something worth photographing.”
American servicemen present at the exercises declined to speak to reporters, Reuters reported.
They were joined by military-diplomatic missions from 22 other countries, the Belarusians said, including Azerbaijan, Hungary, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Vietnam.
Zapad-2025, the first such exercise to be held since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, involves simulating attacking with and defending against nuclear weapons.
During the exercise, troops will practice planning nuclear strikes against a potential adversary in order to “maintain the credibility” of Russian and Belarusian nuclear deterrent forces, Khrenin told the state-run Belta news agency.
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Minsk has said that around 7,000 Russian and Belarusian soldiers are taking part – a stark decrease from the 200,000 seen at Zapad 2021, that was used a smokescreen to the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine – and perhaps a signal of Moscow’s lack of spare manpower.
The exercises take place at a delicate moment as Poland masses troops and Western jets after an incursion of around 19 Russian drones into Polish airspace last week.
In response to the violation, Poland shut a key border crossing with Belarus, freezing a key route for Chinese exports to the European Union reportedly worth almost $30 billion per year and landing a painful economic blow to Minsk.
The presence of US officers at the war games is a sign of warming ties between Washington and Belarus, which have been consolidated by a spate of bilateral talks in recent months.
Last week, Trump special envoy John Coale visited Minsk, securing the release of 52 political prisoners by Belarus including opposition politician Mikalai Statkevich and philosopher Uladzimir Matskevich.
Coale and authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko discussed re-establishing a trade relationship, sanctions relief for Belarus’ national airline Belavia and re-opening the US embassy in Minsk “in the very near future”, according to Reuters.
The embassy had previously been closed in February 2022 after Lukashenko allowed Belarus to be used as a launchpad for deploying thousands of troops into Ukraine.
In June, after a visit to Minsk by high-ranking US official and Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, 14 political prisoners including opposition leader Siarhei Tsikhanouski, who had been imprisoned for more than five years, were released.
Minsk has been keen to play down the exercises as it allows itself to be courted by the US, describing Zapad-2025 as defensive and limited to its eastern regions, far away from NATO’s borders.
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