2017 Russian-Belarusian strategic military exercise
Zapad 2017 (Russian: , , lit. West 2017) was a joint strategic military exercise of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and Belarus (the Union State) that formally began on 14 September 2017 and ended on 20 September 2017, in Belarus as well as in Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast and Russia's other north-western areas in the Western Military District. According to the information made public by the Defence Ministry of Belarus prior to the exercise, fewer than 13,000 personnel of the Union State were to take part in the military maneuvers, a number that was not supposed to trigger mandatory formal notification and invitation of observers under the OSCE's Vienna Document.
Prior to the exercise, Western military analysts and officials cited the total number of Russian troops, security personnel and civilian officials to be involved in the broader war-games as being up to 100,000, which would make them Russia's largest since the Cold War. However, Western analysis after the drills put the troops number estimate significantly closer to the officially announced figures, with Thomas Möller, a Swedish officer observing the exercise, reporting only 12,400 troops present, slightly less than the Belarus claim of 12,700. Since 2016, concerns had been voiced by a number of NATO and Ukrainian officials over Russia's suspected ulterior motives and objectives in connection with the exercise.
Advance information about the drills and invitation of monitors.
Belarus is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Eurasian military alliance of some of the former USSR republics led by Russia; Belarus chairs the bloc in 2017. The Belarusian–Russian strategic "Zapad" and operative "Shchit Soyuza" (Russian: ) exercises are scheduled events that are meant to be held on alternate years, in Belarus and Russia respectively, pursuant to the agreement reached by presidents of Russia and Belarus in September 2009.
Previous post-Soviet Zapad exercises were Zapad 1999, Zapad 2009, and Zapad 2013.
The plan of the exercise was approved by Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko on 20 March 2017: it envisaged two stages and its theme was defined as "the use of groupings of troops (forces) in the interests of ensuring the military security of the Union State". The number of troops to be involved, according to Belarusian Defense Minister Andrei Ravkov, would not to exceed the threshold stipulated by the 2011 Vienna Document – no more than 13,000 personnel; geographically, it would span from multiple locations in Belarus to the Kola Peninsula within Russia's Arctic Circle. It was expected that some units of Russia's 1st Guards Tank Army, which was reconstituted in 2014, as well as 25 Russian aircraft would take part in the exercise in Belarus. According to Western media reports in July 2017, the tank army's task would be to establish a forward command post in western Belarus, and to hold exercises in training areas near the city of Brest. On 13 July 2017, the NATO-Russia Council convened in Brussels, in the course of which the two sides briefed each other on their upcoming drills: Zapad 2017 and NATO's Exercise Trident Javelin 2017. At the end of August 2017, Russian defence ministry said that the exercise would rehearse an anti-terrorist and purely defensive scenario that is not specific to any particular region and "may emerge in any location of the world". The plan of the exercise envisaged a conflict between the alliance of Russia and Belarus and the coalition of fictional "Lubenia", "Vesbaria", and "Veyshnoria", the latter within the borders of Belarus.
Observers from NATO were invited to Zapad-2017 by both Belarus and Russia. The Belarusian foreign ministry said in mid-July 2017 that they had notified all the OSCE countries and intended to invite observers from a number of international organisations as well as from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia (NATO contact state in Belarus in 2017), Sweden, and Norway. Also, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko invited the U.S. delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. On 12 July 2017, in Vienna, Major-General Pavel Muraveiko, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Belarus, gave a detailed briefing on Zapad-2017 to the participants of the OSCE conference.
In mid-August, Lithuania said that it would send its military observers to the Zapad 2017 drills, in Belarus and Leningrad Oblast. Latvia, who previously, on 14 August, said it was still awaiting the relevant invitation from Russia, said it would send 3 observers, including its military attaché in Moscow, who was invited as an observer by Moscow. On 22 August, the Belarusian defence ministry said that observers from the UN, OSCE, NATO, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and International Committee of the Red Cross as well as from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Sweden, and Norway had been invited to Zapad 2017.
On 24 August, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the military alliance would send two experts to attend the war games, after Minsk extended invitation; he said that Belarus had invited NATO to attend five distinguished visitors' days during the drills, and Russia had invited NATO to one such visitors' day; Stoltenberg said attending distinguished visitors' days did not constitute real monitoring and that NATO was seeking "a more thorough way of observing" Zapad 2017. The following day, the Russian foreign ministry issued a statement that dismissed NATO's complaints about alleged lack of transparency as ungrounded; the statement reiterated that the exercise would involve up to 12,700 servicepersons, namely 7,200 from the armed forces of Belarus and 5,500 from the Russian forces, including 3,000 persons on the territory of Belarus.
On the eve of the exercise, the Belarusian foreign ministry said it had received an "unprecedented number" of accreditation requests from foreign news media (about 270).
The Philippine Army sent a ″high-level delegation to observe the final stage″ of Zapad 2017 in Luzhsky Testing Range in Leningrad Oblast, which was presented by the Philippine Ambassador to Russia Carlos D. Sorreta as ″just the beginning of what we expect to be a robust army-to-army engagement in the years to come."
Expert opinions and speculations prior to the drills.
Months prior to the Zapad 2017 exercise, NATO officials and Western military analysts began to speculate about the true number of troops to be involved as well as Russia's possible objectives other than those publicly announced. Such speculations were based on what was perceived as Russia's record of unannounced snap military exercises, and use of drills as a cover for military incursions, as well as a development of Russia's military posture in the country's western regions undertaken in 2016 that suggested plans for a protracted large-scale war. Western analysts speculated in July 2017 that the total number of Russian troops, security personnel and civilian officials to be involved in the broader war-games will range from 60,000 to 100,000, which would make them Russia's largest since the Cold War.
The theories mainly focused on Russia's putative schemes to attack Ukraine and/or reinforce Russia's military presence in Belarus with a view to further threatening Poland and Lithuania, or the Suwałki Gap (the Lithuania–Poland border area) that is perceived by NATO strategists as vulnerable because of the geography. It was also suggested that the Union State created by Russia and Belarus in 1999 could be used by Russia as a legal cover to absorb Belarus.
On the other hand, Igor Sutyagin, a Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London, suggested in August 2017 that the Zapad 2017 exercise was primarily meant as "a show of force", with the main rational purpose to ensure Moscow is capable of moving its troops around quickly through the vast terrain; he also noted that Russia's military efforts were "already overstretched". Similar assessments were made by Andrzej Wilk, a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Eastern Studies, in his article published in early September 2017, as well as by some other Western experts. Wilk also judged Zapad 2017 to have become "the core of an information war between Russia and NATO". In the same vein, Finland's defense minister Jussi Niinisto opined that by reacting so loudly the "Western countries had swallowed the bait" laid by Moscow in its information war with NATO.
Reactions of NATO, Ukraine, and Sweden prior to the drills.
In the run-up to Zapad 2017, NATO and NATO member countries' officials sounded their concern and called on Russia to allow inspections of the drills for the purposes of transparency. In July and August 2017, a number of NATO countries' senior military officials such as U.S. general Raymond A. Thomas, commander of the United States Special Operations Command, Poland's Deputy Defence Minister Michał Dworczyk, and Ben Hodges, commanding general, United States Army Europe, expressed their suspicion that the maneuvers might be used as a pretext to increase Russia's military presence in Belarus and permanently deploy its troops there in a bid to counterbalance NATO's eastern reinforcement. On their part, Russia and Belarus maintained that Zapad 2017 was a scheduled event of strictly defensive nature, its scale being significantly smaller than NATO's analogous drills. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in June 2017 emphasised the significance of Russia and Belarus being in the Union State and dismissed any speculations about Russia's ulterior goals as nonsense.
On 20 June 2017, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg answering a question about the exercise said: "We are going to follow and monitor the Zapad exercise area here closely, and all nations have the right to exercise their forces but it is important that nations, be it Belarus or Russia, exercise their forces that they do that in accordance with well established guidelines and agreements and international obligations and we have something called the Vienna document which outlines how exercises have to be notified and be subject to international inspections and we call on Russia and also Belarus to do that in accordance with the Vienna document so that we have transparency, predictability related to Zapad 2017. We are also working in the framework of the NATO-Russia Council to have more transparency, predictability, connected to military posture but also exercises, and that is always important but especially important now when we see more military presence along our borders in this region. It's even more important to have transparency, international observation of exercises like Zapad."
In July 2017, the U.S. announced it would deploy a Patriot missile battery, helicopters and a National Guard tank company to Sweden (not a member of NATO) in September to join Sweden's largest military drills in some 30 years; the move was not officially billed as a response to Russia's concurrent Zapad. Also, as part of the U.S.-funded Operation Atlantic Resolve, the U.S. was planning to deploy some 600 paratroopers (the 173rd Airborne Brigade′s 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry Regiment) to the Baltic countries to be positioned in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia for the duration of the Zapad 2017 exercise.
On 7 September, Germany's defence minister Ursula von der Leyen told reporters at EU defense ministers' meeting in Tallinn, Estonia: "It is undisputed that we are seeing a demonstration of capabilities and power of the Russians. Anyone who doubts that only has to look at the high numbers of participating forces in the Zapad exercise: more than one hundred thousand."
On 16 August 2017, the Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak told journalists: "We are monitoring the situation. We are aware of all the movements of Russian troops along our border. We realize which threats may arise, and we are going to adequately respond to both the existing threats and the threats posed by the war game." On 1 September, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Viktor Muzhenko said that "for the purposes of adequate reaction to external threats, in particular, those related to the Zapad 2017 exercise", Ukraine had modify the plan of its military training, namely it would conduct strategic command and control drills between 12 September and 15 September. In his annual address to parliament on 7 September 2017, Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko, referring to Zapad 2017, said that there was "more and more evidence for [Russia's] preparations for an offensive war of continental proportions."
On the eve of the official kick-off of Zapad, Reuters cited a senior European security official as saying that Zapad would merge manoeuvres across Russia's western military districts in a "complex, multi-dimensional aggressive, anti-NATO exercise". NATO was said to have taken