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Military exercise "Sapad" on Saturday: Belarus and Russia repel an imaginary attack by NATO
Photo: Alexey Kudenko / imago images / SNA
Belarus has announced that it will buy weapons from Russia for more than a billion dollars.
The Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced on Sunday on the occasion of a joint military maneuver in both countries.
According to Lukashenko, it is about deliveries of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles.
Lukashenko told the Belta news agency that it was an extremely important exercise for the armed forces.
Because both Belarus and Russia are exposed to persistent so-called hybrid attacks from the West.
Conversely, Chancellor Angela Merkel made the same accusation against Belarus on Saturday when she visited Poland.
Defenseless people from other countries are used as subjects of "hybrid attacks", Merkel said on Saturday.
"I think that's completely unacceptable."
State of emergency declared
Belarus is accused of targeting migrants, for example from Iraq, in order to then deport them across the border with Lithuania and Poland to the EU.
The background is apparently that the two EU states have accepted opposition members from Belarus.
As a result, Poland is fighting on its 418-kilometer border with Belarus with an influx of migrants from the Middle East.
The country has declared a state of emergency in the border region and started building a fence.
On Saturday, the Chancellor appealed to Belarus to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees stuck on the Polish-Belarusian border.
The joint military exercises of Russia and Belarus will take place until Thursday in the western parts of Russia and Belarus, some of them bordering on NATO and EU areas.
Neighboring countries such as Ukraine and the NATO member states Poland and Lithuania see this as aggressive.
Russian President Vladimir Putin countered that the exercises were not directed against certain foreign powers.
He also speaks of increased NATO activities on the borders of Russia and Russian allies.
jme / Reuters / dpa