Poland closes border with Belarus ahead of military exercises
Poland is closing its border with Belarus due to the planned Russian-Belarusian military manoeuvre Zapad 2025.
This order will come into force in the early hours of Friday and will also impact rail traffic, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in Warsaw on Tuesday.
"We are dealing with a growing number of provocations by Russia and Belarus," he added.
Tusk said that the manoeuvre would include simulations in which the Suwałki Gap would be the target. The Suwalki Gap is a sparsely populated, narrow strip of land on the border between Poland and Lithuania.
It is militarily significant as it is the only land route between the Baltic states and the other NATO countries and separates the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad from Belarus.
In the event of a military conflict, Russia could attempt to close this gap in order to cut off the Baltic states' connection to the rest of NATO.
The Zapad exercise is to be held September 12 to 16.
The Inspector General of the German Armed Forces, Carsten Breuer, expects around 13,000 soldiers to take part in the large-scale Russian-Belarusian exercise in Belarus and a further 30,000 on Russian territory.
According to information from Minsk, however, the manoeuvre is to be scaled down from the original plans and moved from the western border to the interior of the country - in order to reduce tensions with the West.
According to media reports, the use of the new Russian medium-range missile Oreshnik, which can potentially be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be tested.