Baltic States request OSCE meeting with the delegation of Belarus regarding military exercise Union Resolve 2022

February 14, BPN. The Baltic states have asked the OSCE to convene a meeting with the delegation of Belarus regarding the military exercises Union Resolve 2022.

Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia made this move as they were not satisfied with the reply to the request concerning the troops taking part in the Belarusian-Russian exercises.

“On 9 February, Lithuania sent an enquiry to Belarus on behalf of the three Baltic States to Belarus in line with the OSCE’s Vienna Document regarding the joint exercise […] on Belarusian soil on 10-20 February,” the Estonian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Transparency in the preparation and conduct of military exercises must be respected in accordance with international obligations. Unfortunately, the information about the exercises provided by Belarus so far has been insufficient. The objective of the enquiry is to get information about the military capabilities and the use and placement of both Russian and Belarusian troops during and after the exercises in order to increase military transparency and build trust.”

The Estonian Foreign Ministry pointed out that the response sent by Belarus “was not sufficient.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania reported that the Baltic States demanded from Minsk to specify “the number of Russian and Belarusian troops, information regarding major weapon equipment systems, and information on troops returning to peacetime locations.”

Considering the answer of Minsk to be insufficient, the Baltic States requested the OSCE to organize a meeting with the delegation of Belarus within 48 hours.

“Belarus has stated that the military exercise does not exceed the number of 13,000 troops, which is the threshold for providing information within the Vienna Document. However, the publicly available information and information available to the Latvian Ministry of Defense, clearly indicates that the Belarusian and Russian training exercises involve numbers of troops and military equipment that are significantly higher than this threshold,” the Latvian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

According to official Riga, Russia’s “aggressive rhetoric and the concentration of forces near the borders of Ukraine, non-transparent large-scale joint military exercises in Belarus causes security concerns and undermines arms control mechanisms and security in the OSCE region.”

The statement also notes that although Belarus and Russia have suspended arms control activities under pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has not prevented large-scale mobilization of troops.

“In the context of these exercises, Belarus, like Russia, is taking a selective approach to its arms control obligations – declining inspections, which could give more information regarding the nature of its military activities, but instead proposing to hold limited observation of military exercise trough bilateral agreements,” the Latvian Foreign Ministry said.