MINSK, December 1. /TASS/: Belarus is aware of active militarization in the neighboring countries, but it does not think that hostilities against it can begin in the near future, Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said on Thursday following a meeting of key military, law enforcement and security officials at President Alexander Lukashenko’s office.
"Using our own indicators, to put it in military terms, we see that the situation is not getting better. Tensions are escalating. We see that, unfortunately, neighboring states are militarizing themselves by leaps and bounds," the BelTA news agency quotes Khrenin as saying. "I do not wish to make someone fear that that a war will start tomorrow. The president stressed in his report: there are no direct preparations for war."
Khrenin noted that in the light of militarization afoot in the neighboring countries, the military, security and law enforcement agencies "naturally, are obliged to respond to everything that happens and to prepare their armed forces, their state, first of all, for defense."
At the end of November, President Alexander Lukashenko said that the buildup of NATO forces on the eastern flank of the alliance under the pretext of containing Russia and its allies was in fact tantamount to an attempt to study and master a potential theater of combat operations. Earlier, Minsk repeatedly pointed to the buildups of national armed forces and NATO groups in Poland and the Baltic states.
On October 10, Lukashenko announced that Belarus had begun to form a regional group of troops. Belarusian military personnel will constitute the group’s backbone. According to the Belarusian president, the decision concerning this group was reached during negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in view of an aggravation of the situation on the western borders of the Union State.
