By Tass

Copyright tass

BORISOVSKY TRAINING GROUND /Belarus/, September 15. /TASS/. Observers from 23 countries, including three NATO members, are attending the Zapad 2025 military exercise currently taking place in Belarus, the country’s Defense Ministry told reporters.

Apart from the United States, Turkey, and Germany, three international organizations, namely the Union State, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have sent their observers, Belarus’ top brass noted. According to it, military attaches from 17 countries – Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Hungary, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Peru, Russia, Serbia, Sudan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United States, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe – are participating, the ministry added.

The US military attache, for one, thanked Belarus’ defense chief, Viktor Khrenin, for the invitation to observe the Russia-Belarus joint maneuvers, the ministry continued. The Belarusian defense minister asked the head of the Department for International Military Cooperation to provide the Americans with the best seats and show them everything that they would like to see.

According to the Belarusian Defense Ministry, Minsk advocates strengthening international peace and security as it condemns any military conflict as a means of pursuing political goals and adheres to the principles of solving differences peacefully, the equality of countries, non-interference in others’ internal affairs and other widely-recognized international law norms, the ministry concluded.

The Zapad 2025 drills began on Friday night, September 12, and will continue until September 16. The exercises focus on employing troop formations to strengthen the military security of the Union State. Personnel will rehearse repelling air strikes, countering enemy sabotage units, and planning the use of nuclear weapons, along with testing Russia’s latest Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile system.