The Russian and Belarusian armies began military maneuvers in Belarus on Thursday for ten days, Moscow said, in the midst of Russian-Western tensions around Ukraine.
“The exercises are taking place with the aim of preparing to stop and repel external aggression as part of a defensive operation,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
According to this source, the maneuvers are taking place on five military fields, four air bases and “different sites” in Belarus, in particular in the Brest region, bordering Ukraine.
The French Minister of Foreign Affairs described Thursday as a "gesture of great violence" these military maneuvers.
“They are extremely massive.
There is a very significant accumulation of exercises, in particular on the very borders of Ukraine, ”said Jean-Yves Le Drian on France Inter.
“So everything leads us to think that it is a gesture of great violence, which worries us”.
.@JY_LeDrian: "The situation is very serious: Russia has given itself the means to launch a new aggression against Ukraine. There is no decision taken as far as I know, but when you have 125,000 men at the border, there is cause for concern."
#le79Inter pic.twitter.com/8uezsU5ht7
– France Inter (@franceinter) February 10, 2022
The armies of Minsk and Moscow did not specify the number of soldiers and equipment participating in these maneuvers, but Westerners claim that 30,000 Russian soldiers have been deployed in Belarus as part of this.
These exercises are perceived in Kiev and in the West as a means of pressure from Moscow, which since November has massed more than 100,000 soldiers on the borders of Ukraine.
Russian troops keep pouring in, US says
In addition, the United States claims that Russian troops continue to mass on the border.
"We have continued to observe, including in the past 24 hours, additional capabilities pouring in from other parts of Russia toward the border with Ukraine and Belarus," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday. adding: “We won't give specific numbers but they continue to rise.
In total, more than 100,000 men would now be present.
“We also see signs that other battle groups are on the way,” he continued.
According to him, Russian President Vladimir Putin “continues to strengthen his military capabilities”.
"Every day he gives himself more options, every day he strengthens his abilities,
The spokesperson recalled that the United States had no intention of carrying out any operations in Ukraine, a non-NATO member country, while the first of the 3,000 American soldiers sent to "reassure" the allies on NATO's eastern flank have begun to deploy in Poland and Romania.
Read alsoCrisis in Ukraine: Emmanuel Macron gives dialogue a chance but everything remains to be done
They could potentially participate in relief operations if U.S. nationals residing in Ukraine were to flood into those countries in the event of a Russian invasion, but that shouldn't be necessary, Kirby noted.
The United States has been warning for several weeks that it has no intention of militarily evacuating Americans from Ukraine as it did in Kabul last summer.
Washington accuses Moscow of preparing a potential large-scale invasion of Ukraine in the very short term, even if US officials believe that Vladimir Putin has not yet made a decision whether or not to go on the offensive.
The French head of state met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, then his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday in Kiev.
Emmanuel Macron assured to have received pledges from the Russian president so that there is no "additional escalation", and Paris affirms that this visit made it possible "to move forward" to appease the situation.
Olaf Scholz receives the leaders of the Baltic countries in Berlin
In the meantime, British Foreign Minister Liz Truss is due to travel to Moscow on Thursday to continue negotiations in Moscow with her counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
For his part, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz receives in Berlin the leaders of the Baltic countries, former Soviet republics which have become members of NATO, at the forefront of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and the fear of war on the borders of Europe. .
"The mission is to ensure security in Europe and I believe that we will achieve this," the German Chancellor said on Wednesday, showing optimism by assuring that he believed in the "progress" born of the resumption of intense diplomatic exchanges between Russia and the West.
Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, who announced the dispatch of 350 more German soldiers to Lithuania as part of a NATO mission, is going to Brussels and Warsaw.
He is due to meet NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels, then Polish President Andrzej Duda and his Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw.