COUNTRY REPORT Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V. BELARUS WOLFGANG SENDER June 2018 The NATO exercise Saber Strike www.kas.de/belarus BELARUS BEING A FACTOR Updated daily reports related to Belarus in Twitter: From June 4 to 15 NATO was conducting a is no direct concentration of Russian anti- https://twitter.com/kas_belarus defense exercise Saber Strike in Estonia, NATO troops, which makes the situation by Latvia, Lithuania and Poland with 18,000 no means comparable to that of the Kalinin- participating soldiers. The exercise sought grad region. to strengthen defense in a geographically significant region: a nearly 100-kilometer In various scenarios and comments, the narrow strip of land near the city of Su- threat level in the region is seen to be fur- walki between NATO members Lithuania ther amplified by the perceived equivalence to the north and Poland to the south, and of the situations in Belarus and Russia. Such Russia's Kaliningrad to the west and the views are overly superficial. While the Re- Republic of Belarus to the east. The so- public of Belarus is in a union state and a called Suwalki Gap is often compared to defense union with Russia, and its defense the Fulda Gap - a probable offensive cor- policy is closely linked to Russia with little ridor of the Warsaw Pact countries on the room for its own discretion, still, in Belarus, NATO during the Cold War that lay in the and thus on an important eastern part of triangle between Thuringia, Hesse and the NATO border, there are no Russian Bavaria. combat troops stationed as of yet. Saber Strike was an announced exercise The stand of Belarus with the aim of also testing the rapid de- ployment of troops in the Allies, it was an- There are only occasional, if not insignifi- nounced against the backdrop of many Rus- cant, cases of presence of Russian troops in sian exercises, and contrary to Russian Belarus, including the service operators of practice, in reality the number of partici- two military aid organizations - a regional pants did not exceed the announced figures, telecommunications center of the Russian and above all, it was of a much smaller Navy in Wilejka (Minsk district) and an early scale than usual maneuvers on the Russian warning radar station near Baranovichi side. (Brest area) 1 — as well as temporary per- sonnel and materiel presence during mili- The media coverage of the exercise Saber tary exercises and training and material as- Strike described the situation in this region with a fair emphasis on the fact, that Rus- sia's Kaliningrad stations a menacing, as 1 well as massive, and not purely defensive Skolko rossiyskikh voyenikh obyektov na contingent of troops and materiel, which territorii Belarusi? Deutsche Welle. Available has a noteworthy capacity of Russian Armed at: https://goo.gl/3JGXKh . Accessed on forces. 19.06.2018. Belarus, however, which delimits the Su- Voyennoe sotrudnichestvo Belarusi s Ros- walki gap on the east, should be seen in a siyei. Belarus Security Blog. Available at: light different than that of the media cover- https://goo.gl/SGduuE . Accessed on age. Here, at least for the time being, there 19.06.2018. 2 Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V. sistance from Russia. Although the Regional an intergovernmental agreement between Group of the Armed Forces of Belarus and Russia and Belarus, the Regional Group is to BELARUS Russia is entitled to use a number of joint be used on the basis of uniform Russian- WOLFGANG SENDER military infrastructure facilities, these still Belarusian plans. 4 remain in each nation’s own hands during June 2018 peacetime.2 Russia's reactions to Minsk's refusal was manifested not only in greater political www.kas.de/belarus Over the recent years the government in pressure on Minsk, but also the replacement Minsk has - much to the displeasure of Rus- of the assets kept near Smolensk and in Updated daily reports sia - successfully warded off attempts of Klintsy, on Russian territory bordering on related to Belarus in Twitter: Russia to station Russian stand-alone offen- Belarus, with new military bases. For exam- https://twitter.com/kas_belarus sive forces - for example, one of the wishes ple, in Klintsy - 45 kilometers from the Bel- of Moscow was to have a Russian own air arusian border and near Ukraine – Russia base as well as group of Iskander missiles started building up an approximately operated by Russian personnel. It is obvious 10,000-strong 144th motor-rifle division on that such refusal was extremely difficult to the basis of a 28th motorized rifle brigade stand by due to contractual relations, politi- relocated from the Siberian city of Yekate- cal integration and economic dependency, rinburg in May 2016. 5 These 10,000 soldiers and thus represents a remarkable success alone exceed the number of rotating NATO of Belarusian foreign and security policy. troops in the entire region many times over and will be permanently stationed, unlike Minsk was able to strike an agreement that the NATO units. only the existing shared facilities would be modernized instead of having new Russian An engineer battalion, a rifle regiment and facilities: at the end of 2017, the Belarusian an armored regiment of the 144th Division government approved a $ 20 million pro- were stationed in Jelnja near Smolensk - gram of the Union state of Belarus and Rus- about 100 kilometers from the Belarusian sia till for 2020 to modernize the shared border. Smolensk itself has taken up a re- military infrastructure in the Republic of connaissance battalion and a communica- Belarus. In December 2017, a Russian- tions battalion. Other units in the division - Belarusian agreement on joint military and two more rifle regiments, an artillery regi- technical support of the Regional Group of ment, an anti-aircraft and missile regiment, Armed Forces of Belarus and Russia was electronic combat units and supply depart- published.3 The latter, which has existed ments - are all stationed along the Belarus- since 1998, comprises the armed forces and ian border in the Russian regions of Smo- military assets of Belarus and the Russian lensk and Bryansk. This also shows a clear forces and military assets stationed in three areas near Belarus. In the case of deploy- ment for purposes of defense, according to 4 Voennoe sotrudnichestvo Belarusi s Ros- 2 Voyennoe sotrudnichestvo Belarusi s Ros- siyei. Belarus Security Blog. Available at: siyei. Belarus Security Blog. Available at: https://goo.gl/SGduuE . Accessed on https://goo.gl/SGduuE . Accessed on 19.06.2018. 19.06.2018. 5 Rossiya perevodit voyska k granitse s Bel- arusyu. Chto eto znachit? UDF.BY. Available at: https://goo.gl/v1it2R . Accessed on 3 Minsk razvivayet sotrudnichestvo s NATO, 19.06.2018. Also see: Schlechte Stimmung sokhraniaya voyennoe sotrudnichestvo s zwischen Moskau und Minsk. Länderbericht, Rossiyei. Belarus Security Blog. Available KAS-Belarus. Available at: at: https://goo.gl/wL2PkA . Accessed on https://goo.gl/fBw54Z . Accessed on 19.06.2018. 19.06.2018. 3 Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V. focus on Ukraine. 6 In view of these devel- is not particularly happy about such discre- opments, since 2015 Minsk has also been tion of its alliance partner Belarus. BELARUS making greater efforts not only to improve WOLFGANG SENDER its own relations with NATO, but also to po- In terms of security policy, Belarus is not sition itself as a mediator between NATO only hampered by the generally increasing June 2018 and Russia. While NATO has been reluctant tensions between NATO and Russia, but al- to respond to these requests from the Bela- so, in particular, by the war in Ukraine on www.kas.de/belarus rusian side, Minsk was able to provide im- its southern flank. Minsk is being very care- portant impetus for a dialogue through its ful not to get involved in any way in this Updated daily reports praiseworthy mediation services for the conflict beyond its peace efforts towards related to Belarus in Twitter: conflict in Ukraine, as well as through fur- Ukraine. So far, the Belarusian policy has https://twitter.com/kas_belarus ther diplomatic efforts and expert confer- been successful. Belarus is the only state in ences. The most important recent diplomat- the Eastern neighborhood without territorial ic action was the call for a peace conference conflicts: this is a state of things that should to reduce tensions between Russia and the be acknowledged and preserved by the West. This initiative, quite ill-dubbed "Hel- West. sinki-2," has seen no positive response from the West so far, while Russia has come to Pressure from Russia terms with this idea only these past few weeks and is now apparently trying to The fact that Minsk has been able to with- shape the initiative according to its own stand the massive Russian pressure so far is ideas. One of the fundamental problems be- often as wrongly overlooked in the Western hind it all is that the West occasionally sus- commentary as the fact that the new Bela- pects covert activity of Russia behind rusian military doctrine adopted on 20 July Minsk's suggestion, while a more credible 2016 (i.e. after the Crimean annexation) for view is that the idea actually comes from the first time ever articulates the goal of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry and Russia good relations with NATO and the European Union. Despite the traditional and regular pro-Russian positioning of the country's leadership resulting from its diverse close 6 See: Novaya diviziya ZVO. Livejournal. ties with Russia, Belarus, unlike others, is Available at: https://goo.gl/vN6ctg . Ac- interested in good relations with NATO and cessed on 19.06.2018.