The young Belarusian apprentice soldiers are on the lookout: standing in the cold and in the snow, they hear tank fire in the distance. They are there to prepare for a possible conflict, Minsk saying they are training "the future defenders of the fatherland".
On the training ground, a brand new Russian BTR-82A and another modernized tank send heavy explosions into the air every time they fire.
They are led by young people from an elite military school destined to become the army of tomorrow of Belarus, the only European country allied with Vladimir Putin in his offensive against Ukraine.
On their shoulders and helmets, the red and green flag of Belarus is proudly displayed.
At the shooting range, Colonel Maxime Jouravlev told AFP journalists invited as part of a rare press trip organized by the authorities that his men are training here "the future defenders of the fatherland".
Different conflict scenarios are taught. That day, the apprentice soldiers train in particular to evacuate a wounded companion in the snow.
“Today, we analyze modern conflicts. From that, we take what is new and integrate it into military training,” he explains.
However, the Belarusian officials met are careful not to mention the conflict in Ukraine, where the Russian armada has been facing resistance from the Ukrainian army for a year now.
In recent weeks, concern has grown to see the forces of President Alexander Lukashenko joining the battlefield in Ukraine in favor of a new offensive by Moscow. Especially since an unknown but substantial number of Russian soldiers remain deployed in Belarus, which has been serving as a rear base for the Moscow army for a year.
Thursday, during a rare meeting with the foreign press in which AFP took part, the leader of this former Soviet republic affirmed that his army would be ready to defend itself in the event of an attack on Kiev, which he accused of provocation.
At the end of January, Vladimir Putin had asked his government to negotiate the creation of joint military training centers with Belarus. More than three months after Belarus and Russia even announced the creation of a joint military force with, according to Minsk, a purely "defensive" mission.
President Lukashenko has repeated several times that he does not want to send his troops to Ukraine, but he nevertheless indicated that his army was testing its ability to mobilize, learning directly, according to him, from Russian "errors".
In September 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists, civilians therefore, to stem the Ukrainian dynamic, after several humiliating setbacks on the ground.
Numerous errors had been reported on social networks, in addition to unusual disputes in certain regions of the neighboring country of Belarus.
According to Mr. Lukashenko, if he were to declare a mobilization in his country, “it would happen better than in Russia”.
In the main military academy of Belarus, in the suburbs of the capital Minsk, young conscripts devote themselves to imitating fights on computers, supervised by their superiors.
"Get up!" an officer orders the young apprentice soldiers present. "Sit down!" he shouts in a martial tone.
According to the authorities, these young people are part of a "computer unit" of the army, at a time when cyberattacks have exploded in favor of the conflict in Ukraine, becoming an integral part of modern so-called "hybrid" conflicts.
Earlier in the month, Minsk had called for boosting its cyber capabilities.
Minsk was once a hotspot for high-tech companies, but many specialists have left the country in recent years, especially after the major protests of 2020, which were severely repressed by the government.
In another room, apprentice pilots type behind their computers, listening to orders coming from fake air traffic controllers, all to simulate virtual flights on fighter planes.
In the corridors, references to Belarus' past are visible everywhere, between Belarusian and Soviet symbols and other objects evoking the Second World War.
"Knowing military history helps to promote tactical sense," notes an army officer.
02/18/2023 11:24:25 - Minsk (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
