BORISOVSKY TRAINING GROUND, Belarus and LONDON — Russia placed on a show of firepower as a part of its main army 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 hearth flew throughout the sphere.
Drones had been additionally closely concerned, a mirrored image of how the battle in Ukraine is altering Russia’s army. 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 army 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 had been shot down by responding Polish F-16 and Dutch F-35 fighters, Warsaw stated.
The incursion was by far the largest-ever of Russian drones into NATO airspace, a transfer that has alarmed allied international locations and fueled fears the battle is escalating and spreading. Polish and allied officers have stated 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 international locations 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 going down 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 had been current at Monday’s workout routines. Two U.S. army attachés attended, with army 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 yr’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 had been canceled fully below the pressure of Russia’s battle.
A helicopter gunship participates in joint Russian-Belarusian army drills at a coaching floor close to Barysaw, Belarus, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025.
Pavel Bednyakov/AP
Russia this yr might put the concentrate on nuclear weapons, together with drills regarding its Oreshnik missile.
Russian and Belarusian officers have framed the drills as purely defensive maneuvers.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov informed reporters final week that the Zapad drills will not be directed towards “any third nation.”
“That is about persevering with army cooperation and practising coordination between two strategic allies,” he informed reporters at a briefing. “We’ll proceed alongside this course, which is not at all a secret to anybody.”
Nonetheless, Peskov informed reporters on Monday because the drills commenced that NATO “is combating with Russia — that’s apparent and requires no extra proof.”
“NATO is de facto engaged on this battle,” each “not directly” and “immediately” with its assist to Ukraine, he added.
The workout routines seem to trace at Russia’s resolve to take care of its army stress on Ukraine and on Kyiv’s overseas 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 risk of sanctions on Russia over the weekend, saying he’ll solely impose new measures so if NATO international locations 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 come back to fruition.
Ukrainian officers, in the meantime, are frequently urging the White Home to ship on its risk of latest sanctions on Moscow.
Trump additionally raised considerations alongside NATO’s jap frontier when he stated Russia’s drone incursions into Poland “may have been a mistake” — a suggestion shortly contested by Warsaw.
“We’d additionally want that the drone assault on Poland was a mistake. However it wasn’t. And we all know it,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on social media.
