What are the Zapad 2021 manoeuvres? Perhaps this operation tests how Poland and the Baltic states are prepared for an attack? In the latest issue of „Sieci” Marek Budzisz, however, raises a different question: perhaps Russian aggression has already begun, only we haven’t noticed it?

Marek Budzisz in his article „Zapad 2021. When and where will the Russians strike?” analyses the way the Belarusian-Russian manoeuvres at our border will proceed. According to the assurances of the Deputy Minister of Defence of Belarus, their scenario involves… war with three hypothetical states - Niaris, Pomorie and the Republic of Polar. However, the main opponent of the combined Russian-Belarusian military grouping is to be the Republic of Polar. The phonetic similarity, as well as the statement that the fight against the armed forces of this state is to be the main task of the training, allow us to believe that it concerns Poland.

In the text, the author also draws attention to the unprecedented scale of the soldiers’ training. Major General Yevgeny Ilyin, deputy head of the Russian Defence Ministry’s department for military international cooperation, told the media that 200,000 people would take part in the military exercises in both Belarus and Russia. This declaration caused consternation and disbelief, since earlier, representatives of both the Belarusian and Russian armed forces had spoken of a much smaller scale of the manoeuvres in Belarus, in which less than 13.5 thousand soldiers and officers would take part, with the exact figure being 12.8 thousand.

Such action, as we understand, has its tactical justification:

We are dealing with a conscious and deliberate effort on the part of Belarus and Russia to avoid the obligation to receive, in accordance with the Vienna Convention, foreign observers. This is why the Russians usually organise exercises divided into smaller, formally unrelated manoeuvres on very many training grounds. In this way they test both the state’s war readiness and the armed forces’ preparedness for operations on a scale much larger than regional.

It is worth keeping in mind that at the same time Russia is deliberately bringing in migrants from the Middle East and trying to push them across the border into Poland.

Tłum. K.J.