00:00 Belarus has started military exercises near its border with Poland and Lithuania, a move
00:07 coming with tensions already heightened with the two NATO members over Wagner mercenaries
00:11 moving to Belarus.
00:13 Both Poland and Lithuania have increased border security since thousands of Wagner fighters
00:18 arrived in Russia-allied Belarus under a deal that ended their armed rebellion in late June
00:23 and allowed them and their leader to avoid criminal charges.
00:27 The Belarusian defence ministry said that the drills that began yesterday are based
00:30 on experiences from the Special Military Operation, the term which Russia uses for its war in
00:36 Ukraine.
00:37 It said that the exercise includes the use of drones as well as the close interaction
00:41 of tank and motorised rifle units with units of other branches of the armed forces.
00:47 Leaders of the two nations, that is Poland and Lithuania, have said that they are bracing
00:50 for provocations from Moscow and Minsk in a sensitive area where both countries border
00:55 Belarus as well as the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
00:59 Earlier this month, two Belarusian helicopters flew briefly at low altitude into Polish airspace,
01:05 which the Belarusian authorities have denied.
01:08 That incident had happened in the Grotno region of Belarus, near the so-called Suvalki Gap,
01:13 a sparsely populated stretch of land running 96 kilometres along the Polish-Lithuanian
01:18 border.
01:20 The Suvalki Gap links the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia with the
01:25 rest of the NATO alliance and separates Belarus from Kaliningrad, a heavily militarised Russian
01:30 exclave on the Baltic Sea that has no land connection to Russia.
01:36 Military analysts in the West have long viewed the Suvalki Gap as a potential flashpoint
01:40 area in any confrontation between Russia and NATO.
01:44 They worry that Russia might try to seize the gap and cut off the three Baltic states
01:48 from Poland and other NATO nations.
01:51 Meanwhile, Belarus's military has said that it is actively using Russian mercenaries to
01:55 train its troops and the exercises began as more Wagner fighters reportedly arrived in
02:00 the country.
02:02 The worry is that in a conflict with the West, Russia could sweep into the corridor simultaneously
02:07 from the East and the West, severing the European Union's Baltic countries from their allies
02:11 to the South.
02:14 It is a huge vulnerability because an invasion would cut off Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
02:19 from the rest of NATO.
02:21 Such a move would also result in an immediate face-off between Moscow and NATO's nuclear
02:25 armed members pushing the world to the brink of world-ending confrontation.
02:30 Also in Kaliningrad, Russia has built a formidable military presence spanning nuclear weapons,
02:36 its Baltic fleet and tens of thousands of soldiers.
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