MINSK – Belarus has described next year’s Union Shield exercises with Russia as purely defensive, even as military officials approve the concept for the drills. Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said on Thursday that the manoeuvres would be “exclusively defensive in nature.”
Khrenin spoke in Minsk as he summed up a meeting of the joint board of the Belarusian and Russian defense ministries. The drills are meant to show that the two countries can defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity, he said, according to the RIA Novosti dispatch supplied to the Eastern Herald.
That description is Minsk’s own characterization of the exercise. It does not establish the exercise’s size, location, dates or scenarios, and none of those details appeared in Khrenin’s remarks as supplied. Russian outlets reported, citing the Belarusian Defense Ministry’s press service, that the two ministries had approved the concept for the Union Shield 2027 operational exercise. Those reports did not provide the missing operational details in the portions reviewed.
The approval follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement on May 21 that Russia and Belarus would hold Union Shield exercises in 2027, BelTA reported. Thursday’s remarks therefore add Belarus’s stated purpose and the reported approval of the concept, not the first notice that the drills will take place.
Before the meeting, Interfax reported that the board would discuss the development of the Belarusian-Russian regional grouping of forces. The agenda is not evidence that the drills are tied to any particular deployment, and the Belarusian statements reviewed did not link them to one.
Khrenin also described the security situation around Russia and Belarus as complex and dynamic, TASS reported. That is the Belarusian government’s assessment of the environment in which it says joint military work is carried out. He said the 2026 plan of bilateral military cooperation includes more than 160 joint activities, according to TASS. The figure describes the annual cooperation plan, not the number of events or participants in Union Shield 2027.
What remains unanswered is how Minsk and Moscow will define “defensive” in practice: where the exercise will take place, how many troops will take part, whether outside observers will be invited and what scenario the forces will rehearse.
