

Last week, the Belarusian economic news portal afn.by published a story with the provocative headline “Lukashenka: The Situation with Crimea Allows Belarus to Get its Nuclear Arms Back.” It was, of course, an exaggeration – the original statement lamented over the ineffectiveness of the Budapest...

When seeing Lukashenka in Minsk on 23 April, the Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu said that a Russian air regiment and an airbase will have been created Belarusian territory by 2015. Shoygu said that the first military planes would come...

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...

On Friday, a joint Belarusian-Russian military exercise started in Belarus and in the Kaliningrad Province of Russia. For months Polish media discussed whether the exercise is potentially aimed at mounting aggression and even a nuclear arms deployment against Poland and...

Belarus Digests in cooperation with Belarus Security Blog is launching a new series of publications - Belarus Security Digest. The new series will cover issues relevant to security in Belarus, particularly to the military, special...

On 20 August, Alexandr Lukashenka held a conference on the future priorities for Belarus' armed forces.He proclaimed that “while analysing recent conflicts and wars, we understood that the most important thing for...

More Russian military bases may appear in Belarus soon. According to naviny.by, a Belapan news agency web site an entire aviation division may soon be deployed. This report, however, referred only to an expert from the dubious Russian “Academy...

The Belarusian military forces rarely fall into the spotlight of public discussions. Like in other post-Soviet countries, this institution mainly lives behind closed doors. Army generals normally try to escape contact with the media and their critics in the...

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...

Last week, President Lukashenka approved an agreement with Russia to establish the Single Regional System of Air Defence. The defence ministers of the two nations already signed the controversial treaty three years ago. Russian and Belarusian presidents will jointly appoint...

Following military manoeuvres in the south of Belarus last Friday, the Belarusian ruler put forth a completely new idea for developing public administration. He ordered the formation of a new army called the territorial defence troops. The idea is reminiscient...


March 8 in Belarus: a celebration of emancipation has turned into its opposite. An article by one of this website's authors on the occasion of the Women's Day.