Top Russian commander arrives in Belarus for war games

Russia’s most senior uniformed military officer arrived in Belarus on Wednesday for a large-scale war game with its neighbor amid fears the Kremlin will use the military exercise as cover for an invasion into Ukraine. 

Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov arrived in the former Soviet nation ahead of a 10-day drill known as Allied Resolve 2022, the largest joint war game ever held between the two, which is set to start Thursday. 

The exercise comes as Moscow has continued to place troops along its border with Ukraine, with “indications that additional battalion tactical groups are on their way,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters later on Wednesday. 

U.S. officials for weeks have said more than 100,000 Russian troops are along the Ukraine-Russia border, in addition to roughly 30,000 near the Ukraine-Belarus border, spurning Western concerns there will be a two-pronged attack from Moscow. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, meanwhile, said Russia has placed 140,000 of its troops in the region. 

Asked about Gerasimov’s arrival in Belarus, Kirby said his presence was not unusual given the impending exercise, but that it should be viewed “in the context of what’s going on.”  

“We’re not looking at this exercise in a vacuum, and we understand that senior military leaders are very much involved in facilitating this buildup, a buildup which we believe is destabilizing and unnecessary,” Kirby said. “We obviously are viewing this, certainly, in light of what’s going on but his presence alone at this exercise is not setting off alarm bells here at the Pentagon.” 

In response to the rising threats, Ukraine said its troops will begin their own exercises on Thursday.

And nearly 3,000 U.S. troops have arrived in Poland and Romania to bolster NATO defenses should conflict arrive in Ukraine. 

While the Biden administration has remained firm that American forces will not enter Ukraine in any such fight and has instead threatened crippling sanctions on Russia, the White House has given the Pentagon approval for troops in Poland to help with an evacuation of American citizens from the country, The Wall Street Journal first reported. 

Despite the saber-rattling, Western officials hope diplomacy will prevail and there will not be a similar episode to the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. To that end, French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Moscow and Kyiv this week, but the trip produced no breakthroughs.  

And British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was in Moscow Wednesday for a two-day trip to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.  

But after months of Russia’s military buildup, defense experts warn Moscow is only weeks away from having everything in place for a major invasion.