Zelensky Issues Warning to Europe Over Russia's Belarus ‘Planning'
"Ask your intelligence what Russia is planning this summer in Belarus," Zelensky told reporters in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Monday.
His comment follows the ruling regime in Minsk announcing that joint Zapad-2025 strategic military exercises with Russia will be held further inland in Belarus.
Franak Viačorka, chief political adviser to Sviatlana Tsihanouskaya, who leads the Belarusian opposition to Lukashenko's authoritarian rule, told Newsweek on Tuesday that the drills include "hostile scenarios" against the West.
Newsweek has contacted the Russian and Belarusian foreign ministries for comment.
Lukashenko has not directly joined Putin in the war against Ukraine but, as the Russian leader's closest ally, has permitted Moscow's forces to use Belarusian territory for attacks since 2022.
Zelensky's warning will add to concerns that Putin's control of Lukashenko could see Belarus again used as a staging post for attacks on Ukraine, which would increase the risk to NATO's eastern border.
Zelensky called on allies to seek intelligence on Minsk's plans during the Zapad joint military exercises scheduled for September.
He said Monday that if Russia and Belarus are "bold enough to prepare attacks from there, then we need more strength together."
Zelensky previously warned that Russian troop training in Belarus could mark "the beginning of a full-scale invasion, similar to the one we saw in 2022," posing risks to Ukraine and neighboring NATO states.
Held every two years since 2009, no Zapad exercise took place in 2023. Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin announced that September's exercises would be relocated further inland within Belarus to "reduce tensions." But the drills are seen by analysts and Ukrainian officials as potential cover for Russian troop deployments.
Viačorka took part in Zapad drills as part of mandatory service a decade and a half ago in Lukashenko's army as punishment for his opposition political activities.
He told Newsweek that the drills consisted of anti-Western and pro-Russian military training, including scenarios such as dropping a nuclear bomb over Warsaw.
"These are hostile scenarios. They do it primarily to threaten. It's a part of psychological informational warfare," he said on Tuesday, adding that they pose a threat to Poland and Lithuania, as well as Ukraine.
In 2023, Ukraine's foreign ministry raised the alarm over a build-up of Belarusian and Russian troops near Gomel, close to Ukraine's border.
Since then, there have been other warnings from Ukraine's foreign ministry about the threat Belarus poses, such as in August 2024 that any border violation would prompt a self-defense response from Ukraine in line with the U.N. Charter.
Putin and Lukashenko's alliance has deepened during the war. Analysts say Belarus is becoming Russia's "militarized satellite." The Institute for the Study of War said in December 2024 that the Kremlin is "advancing toward a de facto annexation of Belarus" with a defense pact and integration of military and economic systems.
For Moscow, Belarus strengthens its position on NATO's eastern flank, with implications for U.S. and European security.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: "Ask your intelligence what Russia is planning this summer in Belarus. If they are bold enough to prepare attacks from there, then we need more strength together."
Belarusian opposition politician Franak Viačorka told Newsweek: [Zapad will include] "tests of nuclear facilities, tests of possible escalation. This is a reminder to all Western politicians who still believe they can appease Lukashenko or Putin—it's impossible—you cannot change these guys."
The Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry in August 2024: "Any violation of Ukraine's border by the regime in Minsk would provoke a self-defense response 'guaranteed by the U.N. Charter.'"
The Institute for the Study of War in January 2025: [The Kremlin is] "advancing toward a de facto annexation of Belarus," presenting new threats to the West.
NATO allies are increasing intelligence sharing ahead of Zapad 2025. Tarassis 25—a Joint Expeditionary Force Northern European exercise that will be the largest since the multinational force was established, will be held at the same time.
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More seven years (Photo by) As the Kremlin counts down toward its confrontation with the Western Allies, Bennett muses, it is likely already creating its masterplan for victory. Moscow's attacks on Ukraine's atomic stations, he says, could be mere precursors, testing varying battle stratagems to lay the groundwork for the destruction of nuclear stations positioned in NATO nations in the future. Could Moscow already be mapping out pre-emptive missile strikes on British and French nuclear reactors that in turn contaminate the continent and its citizenry with mortal doses of radiation? Bennett says it's 'more likely that Russia would seek to sabotage critical national infrastructure, including nuclear power plants, from within using sleepers,' or Kremlin intelligence agents who have adopted new identities, complete with foreign passports and elaborate cover stories, across Western nations. 'Russia has had over a decade (the origins of the current war can be traced back to Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea) to insert sleepers into critical national infrastructure installations such as nuclear power plants, gas-powered stations, airports, ports, communications hubs.' 'I think it likely that Russia has in place sleepers across any state it considers hostile,' Bennett adds, 'which, of course, would include NATO member states.' 'Which means that Russia has a head start on us.' 'It is easier to infiltrate liberal democracies than it is to infiltrate authoritarian states like Russia.' 'The former are open,' he says. 'The latter closed.' 'The UK's National Security Act is a belated response to this threat which, as I said, has been building.' This act, Bennett adds, aims to counter 'threats to national security from espionage, sabotage and persons acting for foreign powers,' including the sleepers deployed by Putin, a onetime KGB espionage operative. Putin was stationed in East Berlin when he watched—in agony—as pro-democracy demonstrators pulled down the machine gun-guarded Berlin Wall and freed the millions of East Germans who had been captured behind the shoot-to-kill barricade. Tanks approaching a checkpoint area of the Berlin Wall. Vladimir Putin, a KGB agent stationed in ... More East Berlin until the fall of the Berlin Wall, now dreams of recreating the Soviet Union and its satellite states (Photo by) As this democracy movement ricocheted across Eastern Europe, and communist rulers were toppled like dominoes, these satellites of the Soviets crossed into new orbits around NATO, after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics itself crumbled. Putin's fever-pitch passion since then has been to turn back time and revive the Soviet empire, even if that means Russian tanks and troops reinvade Eastern Europe and other post-Soviet realms. Peering into the storm-cloud future, Bennett predicts the next world war will erupt within the next decade, even as Putin's sleepers are activated to sabotage atomic stations and 'agencies such as the police service, the fire and rescue service … [and] defense contractors.' Elena Grossfeld, an expert on Russia's intelligence and defense operations at prestigious King's College London, points out that Putin, a world master of espionage and sabotage, like his Soviet forebears Lenin and Stalin, has already had more than two decades in power, ample time to despatch sleeper agents across the West. And the top-echelon sleepers turned out in Putin's 'illegals program,' she tells me in an interview, form just one class of spies. Other agents include Russians recruited during the mass exodus of intellectuals and technocrats since Putin's rise to power and foreigners lavishly bribed to join the Kremlin's intelligence corps. 'With multiple sabotage operations in Europe, Russian intelligence has been using a variety of agents.' Yet the size of Putin's shadow army of spies across Europe and the U.S. is difficult to estimate, she says. If even a handful succeed in infiltrating European or American nuclear power outposts, the potential could arise for this fifth column to sabotage the plants with the outbreak of a war. 'Damaging adversary infrastructure is aligned with Russian military and intelligence approaches,' Grossfeld says. And, whether in Ukraine now or in some future target of Moscow's aggression, she adds, 'The potential destruction of a nuclear power plant could be used to benefit Russia's military plans - as in, creating a denied territory, or some other purpose.'
