In anticipation of the joint Russian-Belarusian military exercise “West-2021,” voices are heard again in Poland demanding for tougher anti-Russian policy of the collective West
According to Lenta.ru, journalist of the Polish publication Tygodnik TVP Piotr Piotrowicz voiced a proposal that has already become popular among the Polish establishment to talk to Russia exclusively from the position of force.
“Russians want the countries in our region to feel threatened and for the North Atlantic Alliance to reduce its activities on its eastern flank”, – he pointed out.
Despite the fact that most of the maneuvers will take place in Russia, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, which is quite far from Poland’s borders, Petrovic stressed that Poland fears possible provocations, quoting the country’s National Defence Minister Marcin Ocepa as saying that West-2021 is “a military exercise of unprecedented scale, much larger than Russia claims”.
Earlier NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg complained about the lack of information from Russia on the upcoming exercise, although the Russian Defence Ministry has repeatedly pointed out that military attachés of the Alliance were invited to Zapad-2021 as observers, but amicably ignored the invitation