Aliaksandr Lukashenka made a good personnel decision by appointing a new Chief of General Staff. Security agencies suffer from underfunding. It forces them to adopt austerity measures and negatively impacts the number of those who want to choose to serve in...

Belarusian authorities sided openly with Kyiv in its conflict with Moscow by be willing to help Ukraine in bypassing a possible economic blockade by Russia. The establishment of joint Belarusian – Ukrainian manufacturing companies in Belarus will neutralise to a large extent the...

On 16 October, the High Command of the Belarusian military conducted a detailed analysis of West-2013 exercise, which played out in Belarus in late September. The event became the largest show of force by the Union State of Russia and...

Belarus shows its adherence to a defence alliance with Russia and other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). In September, already two joint exercises took place in the country.  However, the ability of the post-Soviet military alliances (CSTO and the...

On 9 May the annual parade took place in Minsk to honour the victory in the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany. According to today's official statistics during that war every third Belarusian inhabitant died. Nazis killed around  600-800...

Belarus has mandatory legal conscription, but Alexander Lukashenka has ordered the preparation of a law on alternative civilian service in 2013. For a long time the absence of this law has been putting many young people in a legal trap of...

Amnesty International has welcomed the release of Yevgeny Yakovenko, a conscientious objector who had been sentenced to one year in prison for “evading military service”. He was released under an...

Ivan Mikhailov, Dmitry Smyk and Yevhen Yakovenko – the three young men convicted since late 2009 of refusing compulsory military service on grounds of conscience – separately told Forum 18...