Russia and Belarus carry out military drills amid rising tension – Europe live

in Belarus

On Sunday, I visited the Stalin Line military exhibition park outside Minsk, where families gathered for the annual patriotic “Tank Day” celebrations.

The sprawling site was filled with the smell of barbecues and the crack of mock gunfire. Children clambered over Soviet-era armour, some dressed in miniature uniforms, while others queued for rides on tanks or to fire rifles.

Belarus has been a crucial ally for Russia during the invasion of Ukraine, offering its territory as a launchpad for Moscow’s initial thrust from the north in February 2022 and supplying the Russian army with clothing, gear and equipment.

But Alexander Lukashenko has resisted Kremlin pressure to send his own troops into the conflict – a step deeply unpopular with both the army and the wider population. And despite the military pageantry on Sunday, there was little appetite for Belarusian troops to be drawn into Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“All we want is peace, we don’t want to send our boys to fight there. It is not our war,” said Galina, stepping down from a tank ride with her four-year-old son.

Belarus has not been directly hit by the fighting, though some residents say they have noticed more Russian drones overhead in recent months. “We hear them at night, and sometimes our guys shoot them down,” said Aleksei, visiting the park with his wife.

Belarus’s chief of the general staff, Pavel Muraveiko, said last week that Minsk warned Poland and Lithuania of drones approaching their borders and had even downed some.

EU foreign affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper was also asked about the military drills in Belarus that Pjotr is attending (12:04).

Here is what she said:

We’re closely monitoring this joint strategic military exercise that is taking place on the territory of Belarus.

We continue to call on Russia and Belarus to fully comply with OSCE 2011 Vienna Document, which requires prior notification for military activities, and we remain actively engaged in preparing for any potential security threats surrounding Zapad 2025.

European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho told reporters that the EU has already been phasing out Russian fossil fuels, as demanded by the US president, Donald Trump, over the weekend.

“Phasing out of Russian fossil fuels is something that we have been doing and are doing actively for a number already of years, since the beginning of the war, with a very clear roadmap, with now even a clear legislative proposal in order to phase out the remaining gas still entering the EU.

… This is something on which the EU has been very actively and we have a very, very clear roadmap, and how to go about it.”

She also confirmed that the 19th package of sanctions was still “being prepared” and has not yet been presented to the member states.

at the Borisov military ground, Belarus

I’m at the Borisov military ground in Belarus, on a rare Guardian trip to the authoritarian state, where Zapad – the joint Russian-Belarusian drills – are under way.

The two allies are rehearsing scenarios of an attack on Belarus in what are the first of such exercises since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

I watched as Russian and Belarusian forces staged what they called a defensive scenario against an imagined western invasion – in effect, Nato.

Fighter jets roared overhead, tanks shelled mock wooden houses and drones struck targets, before troops stormed in to raise Russian and Belarusian flags over a “liberated” village.

The exercises come amid heightened regional tensions after more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace, some of them flying over Belarus. On Sunday, a Russian drone entered Romania’s airspace and was tracked by its air force for nearly an hour before leaving,

This year’s drills are a fraction of the size of Zapad-2021, which involved some 200,000 personnel, with only a few thousand Russian troops taking part alongside Belarusian forces.

The reason is straightforward: Moscow is tied down in its war in Ukraine and short of spare manpower. Even so, western capitals will be watching closely, mindful that Zapad-2021 gave Vladimir Putin cover to shift large parts of his army and equipment westwards, months before launching the assault on Ukraine – including from Belarusian territory.

For Alexander Lukashenko, the exercises come at a delicate moment. Long practised at hedging between Moscow and the west, the Belarusian leader has recently made fresh overtures to Donald Trump’s administration. Last week, he secured limited US sanctions relief after releasing more than 50 prisoners, among them a British-Belarusian woman.

Lukashenko has been at pains to play down Zapad-2025, insisting the drills are defensive in nature and staged deep inside the country – away from Nato’s borders, where Poland has massed troops and western jets are patrolling the skies after a recent Russian drone incursion.

But tensions with Warsaw have nonetheless spiked after Poland shut a key border crossing with Belarus last week after the drone incident, delivering a painful economic blow to Alexander Lukashenko, who depends on the route for the transit of primarily Chinese goods.

in Kyiv

Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski confirmed that while the drones that entered Poland last week were capable of carrying ammunition, they were not loaded with explosives.

“Interestingly, they were all duds, which suggests to me that Russia tried to test us without starting a war,” Sikorski told the Guardian in Kyiv.

He dismissed suggestions that Polish air defences had been unprepared for the incursion, given the fact some of the drones travelled hundreds of miles into Polish territory, and that accounts suggest only three or four out of about 19 were shot down.

“The drones didn’t reach their targets and there was minor damage to property, nobody was hurt. If it happened in Ukraine, by Ukrainian definitions, that would be regarded as a 100% success,” he said.

Sikorski said the Polish response would have been “much tougher” if last week’s attack had caused injuries or deaths in its territory, but declined to elaborate on how such a response could look in a future scenario. “With an aggressor and a liar like Putin, only the toughest counter-pressures work,” he said.

Sikorski said he hoped Trump would receive the Nobel peace prize if he could achieve “a fair peace” in the conflict, which he described as “Ukraine within defensible borders and a Ukraine that is integrating with the west”.

When it was suggested that Trump had so far showed not much sign of pressuring Putin to accept such an outcome, he said: “He has his personal style, we respect it, but we will judge it by results.”

Poland has said it would not contribute troops to such a mission and Sikorski, speaking at a Kyiv conference, cautioned against grand rhetoric when it came to future guarantees.

“Security guarantees are meant to deter a potential adversary … So what we are saying is that if there is some kind of peace, the next time Russia tries anything against Ukraine, we might go to war with Russia. Now I find that not very credible. Because if you want to go war with Russia, you can do it today and I see no volunteers. And there is nothing more dangerous in international relations than giving a guarantee that is not credible,” he said.

Back to Ukraine, Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski told my Guardian colleague Shaun Walker over the weekend that the Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace was an attempt by the Kremlin to test Nato’s reactions by incremental escalations without prompting a full-scale response.

Let me bring you some of the key lines from this interview.

Spain should boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel takes part, Spanish culture minister Ernest Urtasun said, joining other European nations threatening to pull out of the event, AFP reported.

His comments came a day after Spain’s La Vuelta cycling race was brought to a premature end due to chaotic pro-Palestinian protests in the centre of Madrid.

Demonstrators denouncing the participation of the Israel-Premier Tech team in one of cycling’s major races overwhelmed police and invaded the course in the Spanish capital, forcing organisers to cut short the final stage.

“We have to ensure that Israel does not take part in the next edition of Eurovision. Just as Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland and also the Netherlands have already done, if we do not succeed in expelling Israel, Spain should not participate,” Urtasun told Spanish public radio.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has landed in Poland, after a weekend in Slovenia and Austria while at the same time a high level Chinese delegation enter a second day of talks in Madrid with the US over tariffs.

Wang hit out against Trump’s recent call for tariffs of between 50 and 100% on China when in Slovenia over the weekend saying his country was committed to promoting peace talks.

“China does not participate in or plan wars, and what China does is to encourage peace talks and promote political settlement of hotspot issues through dialogue,” Wang Yi said over the weekend, according to China Daily.

At the same time a Chinese delegation led by Chinese vice premier He Lifeng are in Madrid for a second day of talks over tariffs. It is the third round of talks after Geneva and London in July when they agreed another 90 day truce.

They are also discussing Washington’s demand that TikTok be sold to a non-Chinese owner or face a US ban by 17 September.

US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said they had made progress on Tiktok following a six hour session on Sunday but warned a deal may not be struck.

“Our Chinese counterparts have come with a very aggressive ask,” he added. “We will see if we can get there at present. We are not willing to sacrifice national security for a social media app.”

Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink was back online for most users after a brief outage on Monday, according to tracking website Downdetector.com as reported by Reuters.

Starlink’s website reported an outage early on Monday, without providing further details.

“Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage. Our team is investigating,” it said.

The message has since been removed.

The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces Robert Brovdi reported that the Starlink outage affected the entire frontline of the war with Russia starting at 07:28 local time (0428 GMT).

Ukraine’s forces are heavily reliant on SpaceX’s Starlink terminals for battlefield communications and some drone operations. More than 50,000 terminals are currently in operation in Ukraine, according to officials.

Romania has summoned the Russian ambassador to protest over the entry of a Russian drone into its airspace during a strike on neighbouring Ukraine over the weekend.

Just days after a number of Russian drones were reported crossing into Poland, another one flew into Romania on Saturday, drawing further condemnation from EU leaders.

In a statement, Romania’s defence ministry condemned Moscow’s actions, saying “they represent a new challenge to regional security and stability in the Black Sea area, AFP reported.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said:

“Russia’s incursion into Romanian airspace is once again a blatant violation of EU sovereignty and a serious threat to regional security. We are working closely with Romania and all Member States to protect the EU territory.”

But on Monday morning, Russia sought to deflect the blame pointing at Ukraine instead and claiming, without any evidence, that the drone incursion was “a provocation” by Kyiv.

Today should also bring us some first reactions to US president Donald Trump’s “letter to the world” over the weekend, asking Nato allies to completely halt purchases of Russian oil, implement their sanctions, and join him in tariff wars with China.

It’s Monday, 15 September 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.

Good morning.