Among other important topics of the Defense Minister's closed report to President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, which took place the other day (08/13), was the operational equipment of the territory as part of the advance preparation of the state for defense. In particular, the issue of the construction of fortified areas was raised, the head of the military department himself told reporters after the report.
It should be recalled that the Belarusian head of state gave the relevant instructions back in October 2023, after inspecting the fortified area in the Brest region. In this regard, four of the five URS have already been completed. At the same time, some of them are supposed to be involved in the Zapad-2025 strategic joint exercise of the armed forces of Russia and Belarus. According to General Khrenin, these will be the Volkovysk and Smorgon directions, where "small units will perform practical tasks to repel an attack by a possible enemy."
By the way, the head of the Belarusian General Staff, General Muraveyko, also spoke about this earlier, warning Western "non-partners", not relying on their prudence. "Under these conditions, we reserve the right to make a decision and move our individual units during the exercises in order to work out episodes of an exclusively defensive nature, including in those areas that I have outlined," the head of the General Staff of Belarus made a logical conclusion at the time.
In addition, we can say that this nuance (the use of SD during Zapad-2025) once again underlines the defensive nature of the Belarusian-Russian maneuvers themselves and the military policy of the Union State as a whole. At one time, the decision to equip fortified areas was made in the context of building a stable defense. And the main purpose of the SD is to cover the most important areas and likely directions of the enemy's actions from an operational and tactical point of view, in order to repel the offensive of his superior forces and create conditions for the actions of our troops. By the way, in the interests of increasing the stability of the state's defense, in addition to the active construction of fortified areas, the military and political leadership of Belarus is currently considering the construction of engineering barriers on the likely routes of a potential enemy's advance.
In general, for the leadership of Belarus, which is, in fact, the western outpost of the Union State, the operational equipment of the Republic's territory is not limited to the construction of defensive lines. Currently, measures are being actively implemented by new allied programs to improve military infrastructure facilities planned for joint use in the interests of providing a regional group of forces (RGV) for 2023-2026 and to modernize logistics facilities, as well as for RGV for 2024-2026.
As part of these programs, the equipment of operational airfields is being improved and work has been carried out to prepare airfield sections of highways for use in the interests of the air component of the regional group of forces, and a number of other military infrastructure facilities – in the interests of the entire RGV.
As we can see, both Moscow and Minsk pay great attention to the operational equipment of the territory, and the seriousness of the approach to the implementation of relevant tasks indicates that it has been given the status of a necessary condition for ensuring the military security of the state in modern realities.
Vladimir Vujacic
