Russia sent two nuclear-capable strategic bombers on a training mission over Belarus on Thursday in a show of Moscow's support for its ally amid a dispute over migration at the Polish border.
The Belarusian defence ministry said two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers practised bombing runs at the Ruzhansky firing range in Belarus. As part of the joint training, Belarusian fighter jets simulated an intercept, the ministry said.
The missions marked the second time in two days that Russia has sent nuclear-capable bombers into the skies over Belarus.
A pair of Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers flew a similar patrol on Wednesday, and Belarusian air defence assets practised intercepting them.
Russia has strongly supported Belarus amid a tense standoff this week as thousands of migrants, most of them from the Middle East, gathered on the Belarusian side of the border with Poland in the hope of crossing into Western Europe.
The European Union has accused Belarus' authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko of encouraging illegal border crossings as a "hybrid attack" to retaliate against EU sanctions on his government for its crackdown on internal dissent after Mr Lukashenko's disputed 2020 re-election.
Belarus denies the allegations but has said it will no longer stop refugees and migrants from trying to enter the EU.
The Belarusian defence ministry accused Poland on Thursday of an "unprecedented" military build-up on the border, saying that migration control did not warrant the concentration of 15,000 troops backed by tanks, air defence assets and other weapons.
"It looks more like forming a strike group of forces," the ministry said, adding that the Polish military build-up had prompted Belarus to respond with actions "both independently and within the existing agreements with our strategic ally" - a reference to Russia.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here