Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (second left)
NATO said Wednesday it will send three experts to observe military exercises between Russia and Belarus next month but alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg wants the two countries to allow broader monitoring.
Russia and Belarus say the Zapad 2017 exercise, which runs from Sept. 14 to Sept. 20 not far from the borders of NATO allies Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, will involve less than 13,000 troops. Under international rules, the two should allow wider access to monitors if troop numbers exceed that figure.
NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said the three experts will attend “Visitors’ Days” in Belarus and Russia after they were invited to attend.
But she said international rules permit monitors to have much wider access, including briefings on the exercise, opportunities to talk to soldiers and overflights.
The rules governing military exercises are enshrined in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s so-called Vienna Document.
Stoltenberg is calling for the Vienna Document to be revamped, and believes he can muster enough support to ensure that unannounced war games, or snap exercises, can be watched with “snap monitoring,” or that small, multiple maneuvers under different commands be recognized as one big exercise, loopholes he says Moscow is exploiting.
“It’s especially important now, because tensions are higher than they used to be. There is more military activity, more exercises and therefore it’s even more important that we avoid incidents and accidents or misunderstandings,” he said.
NATO allies are concerned that Moscow might leave military equipment behind in Belarus when the exercises are over, perhaps to use later should President Vladimir Putin want to send troops quickly across the border, as he did in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.
But Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister, Lt. Gen. Alexander Fomin, has rejected what he described as Western “myths about the so-called Russian threat.” MDT/AP
