Opinions & Interviews

MOSCOW, 29 October (BelTA) – The Belarusian and Russian armies will stage a joint exercise Union Shield in 2015. The information was released by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu after the joint session of the boards of the Belarusian Defense Ministry and the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow on 29 October, BelTA has learned.

The official specified that the Union Shield exercise will take place in Russia.

He remarked that the session of the boards had summarized results of the Zapad 2013 [West 2013] exercise that took place in Belarus. According to the Russian Defense Minister, the experience accumulated during the exercise will be taken into account during the Union Shield 2015 exercise, too. The future exercise will be used to train the application of the Belarusian-Russian regional military force.

The session of the boards of the Belarusian Defense Ministry and the Russian Defense Ministry discussed plans for cooperation between the two ministries in the next two years. According to Sergei Shoigu, close attention will be paid to improving the legal base for the bilateral cooperation, the development of joint defense systems: air defense, reconnaissance, communications, and radio warfare.