BORISOVSKY TRAINING GROUND, Belarus and LONDON — Russia placed on a show of firepower as a part of its main navy workout routines in Belarus on Monday, with neighboring NATO nations on alert amid a number of the highest tensions in Europe since Moscow started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Round 7,000 troops are collaborating within the workout routines, 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.
Warplanes dropped highly effective bombs, sending smoke plumes rising into the air, and intense tank and tracer fireplace flew throughout the sphere.
Drones have been additionally closely concerned, a mirrored image of how the battle in Ukraine is altering Russia’s navy. Reconnaissance, kamikaze FPV drones and bomber drones all took half, as did ground-based robots used for recovering wounded troops.
Servicemen attend joint Russian-Belarusian navy drills at a coaching floor close to Barysaw, Belarus, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025.
Pavel Bednyakov/AP
The drills come lower than every 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 have been shot down by responding Polish F-16 and Dutch F-35 fighters, Warsaw mentioned.
The incursion was by far the largest-ever of Russian drones into NATO airspace, a transfer that has alarmed allied nations and fueled fears the battle is escalating and spreading. Polish and allied officers have mentioned 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 nations 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 during the drill.
The Zapad drills are happening amid an obvious thaw in U.S.-Belarusian relations. 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 acknowledged the intention to re-open the shuttered U.S. embassy in Minsk.
Allied officers have been current at Monday’s workout routines. Two U.S. navy attachés attended, with navy observers from fellow NATO nations Turkey and Hungary additionally on website.
The Zapad — that means “West” — workout routines simulate a protection towards an assault on Belarus by Western forces.
The final time Russia held these workout routines 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 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. Just a few thousand Russian troops are believed to be collaborating on this week’s drills.
The 2023 workout routines have been canceled totally below the pressure of Russia’s battle.
A helicopter gunship participates in joint Russian-Belarusian navy drills at a coaching floor close to Barysaw, Belarus, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025.
Pavel Bednyakov/AP
Russia this 12 months might put the concentrate on nuclear weapons, together with drills referring to its Oreshnik missile.
Russian and Belarusian officers have framed the drills as purely defensive maneuvers.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov advised reporters final week that the Zapad drills should not directed towards “any third nation.”
“That is about persevering with navy cooperation and practising coordination between two strategic allies,” he advised reporters at a briefing. “We’ll proceed alongside this course, which is not at all a secret to anybody.”
Nonetheless, Peskov advised reporters on Monday because the drills commenced that NATO “is combating with Russia — that’s apparent and requires no further proof.”
“NATO is de facto engaged on this battle,” each “not directly” and “straight” with its help to Ukraine, he added.
The workout routines seem to trace at Russia’s resolve to keep up its navy stress on Ukraine and on Kyiv’s international backers, regardless of the Kremlin’s claimed readiness to have interaction 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 nations 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 return to fruition.
Ukrainian officers, in the meantime, are frequently urging the White Home to ship on its menace of latest sanctions on Moscow.
Trump additionally raised issues alongside NATO’s jap frontier when he mentioned Russia’s drone incursions into Poland “may have been a mistake” — a suggestion shortly contested by Warsaw.
“We might 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.
