From 15 to 18 September the Belarusian army ran a command-staff exercise with its Western Operational Command. The defence ministry said military attachés from Bulgaria, Hungary, Turkey, the United States and the Czech Republic watched part of it. State media published about a hundred documents on the exercise that week; we found none that mentioned the attachés. Only one state text brought together the exercise, the American envoy’s visit and the drone shot down over Lithuania that night. It was a review of foreign press from the President’s own press pool. What we do not know is why no attaché from Poland, Lithuania or Latvia, the three countries on whose borders the exercise ran, is on the list.
One exercise, two audiences
The exercise was led by the chief of the general staff, Pavel Muraveika, under the theme of commanding troops during a strategic operation. BelTA announced it on the first morning. Over the next five days state and pro-regime sources in our archive published between 15 and 28 documents a day about it.
The attachés appear in two documents in our archive, both from independent outlets. On 17 September Reform and Pozirk reported the ministry’s statement, including its line that the diplomats had been able to see “for themselves” that the exercise was defensive.
So the gesture existed and the ministry announced it, but the state press did not pass it on. Whatever the invitation was for, it was not for the Belarusian audience.
The ministry announced the observers. The state press did not pass it on.
It has not always been like this
State media have not always ignored foreign observers. When Minsk wanted them seen, it made sure they were.
In February 2022, weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine partly from Belarusian territory, state sources published 40 documents in one month about foreign attachés and observers at the joint exercises then under way. In August and September 2025, around the Zapad-2025 exercise, the count was 55 and then 53. For Zapad, Minsk said it had invited observers from all 56 states of the Vienna Document.
In 2026 the subject has almost gone. We count two state documents on foreign observers in the whole year, and none in September.
In 2025 the observers were news. In 2026 they have almost disappeared.
The only text that joined the three
On 19 September the President’s press pool published its weekly review of foreign media under the title “Coale’s visit, the command-staff exercise and the lost drone”. BelTA’s and CTV’s Telegram channels reposted it, and so did Hrodna Pravda and even the official news section of a football club’s website.
The review handles each subject through someone else’s words. On the exercise it quotes an Italian outlet: Minsk describes it as defensive and below the thresholds of the 2011 Vienna Document. Those are the levels at which notification and observation become obligations. On the drone it states that the drone “has nothing to do with Belarus” and was not heading for Lithuania. It then quotes Delfi: after Ukrainian electronic warfare, the drone left its route “and reached Lithuania through Belarus”.
The exercise was presented as within the rules. The drone was presented as not Belarus’s business, with a quote that put its route through Belarus.
The pool said the drone had nothing to do with Belarus, then quoted a line saying it came through Belarus.
The neighbours
The ministry named five countries. None of them borders Belarus, and the exercise ran near the Polish and Lithuanian borders.
We do not know why. Poland, Lithuania and Latvia may have no military attachés accredited in Minsk at present. They may have been invited and declined, or they may not have been asked. The ministry’s statement does not say, and we have not been able to establish it. We report the list as published.
The other explanation
A plainer reading deserves a hearing. Inviting accredited attachés to part of a national exercise is routine protocol, and state media do not report routine. Zapad-2025 was a large strategic exercise with Russia; this was a smaller national one. On that reading, the difference in coverage reflects scale, not a choice.
None of the five countries that watched borders Belarus.
Scale explains some of it. It does not explain the path the invitation took. The ministry announced it and independent outlets reported it. Every state channel we hold then left it out, while the exercise itself ran as daily news. Nor does it explain the one state text about that week. It answered foreign readers about the exercise and the drone, and told domestic readers nothing about the observers.
We wrote on 22 September about how the same outlets treated the drone. This is the other half of the same week: transparency offered to foreign capitals, and silence at home about both.
Confidence
In text: the coverage counts and the pool’s wording come from our archive and are linked, so the evidence is strong. The comparison with 2022 and 2025 depends on a keyword match and shows the pattern more reliably than the exact numbers. Why the neighbours’ attachés were absent is unknown.
Watch
Whether Belarus invites observers to the CSTO exercises on its territory on 11–16 October, and whether state media report it.
Any statement from Warsaw, Vilnius or Riga on whether their attachés were invited to the September exercise.
Whether the state press ever names the September observers, or the drone’s route, in its own words.
Method and limits
We counted coverage of the exercise and of the attachés in state, state-affiliated, ministry and pro-regime Telegram sources in our archive for 14 to 22 September 2026. The match covered the headline and the first 600 characters of text. A state item that mentions the attachés only deeper in the text would be missed.
The long series counts documents from 2021 that name military attachés or foreign observers together with an exercise. It measures how often the subject was raised, not how many observers attended.
We quote the pool’s review from its text as posted on 19 September. The Delfi and Italian quotations are as the pool gives them, and we have not checked them against the originals.