All university students to complete basic military training – defense minister

June 1, BPN. All Belarusian universities will offer a compulsory basic military training course, Defense Minister Viktar Chrenin told MPs on May 31.

The Ministry of Education has already approved the course and allocated class time, he added.

“Further [military] training is planned for citizens who wish to defend the country voluntarily but for some reason can’t be called up for service,” the Russian state-run website Sputnik.by reported citing the official. They will be “trained to use weapons” with no age or gender restrictions, Chrenin said.

Since September 2022, Belarus’ secondary schools have hired military instructors to teach military-patriotic classes. In March, state-run media outlets reported that 93 percent of schools had military instructors.