From October 17 to 30, NATO countries held a nuclear deterrence exercise in Europe called “Steadfast Noon”. Despite the fact that these exercises were planned, the State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus Alyaksandar Volfavitch found a hidden threat in them:
“This is an exercise with nuclear forces, where, according to the exercise plan, about 400 targets are being considered on the territory of Poland and Russia. The exercises are offensive in nature, not defensive. And all the statements of the collective West leaders that this is a planned exercise cause a slight irony and laughter”.
Looking at 2021 - exactly the same month, in October, there were the same exercises in case of a nuclear attack. 2020 - same thing - NATO nuclear exercises in October. Also in 2014, NATO countries held a nuclear exercise “Steadfast Noon”.
Even Sergey Ryabkov, Deputy Head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, acknowledged that NATO exercises are going on as usual:
“I will emphasize once again that there is no "emergency" in this, these are regularly held events. Of course, their scenarios may differ - not always in the same order and sequence”.
But Belarus continued to escalate the situation. Political analyst Vadzim Yalfimau on the air of “Radio Minsk” called these exercises epoch-making:
“This is indeed an epoch-making event, since there have not been such exercises for many years. At the same time, the Americans say that they are not the ones who provoke the nuclear threat”.
The Russian exercise “Grom” began on October 26 and was not in response to NATO exercises, but as a planned exercise. This is said by the Russian state media themselves. Here, for example, is an episode of the "Vremya" programme on Channel One:
“The exercise is planned. The same as the NATO exercises that began in mid-October under the mysterious name “Steadfast Noon””.
The TASS news agency has posted a detailed chronology of the Russian strategic nuclear forces exercises. It clearly shows that such exercises have been held in Russia every year since 2012, and usually in the fall. Last year, however, there were no such exercises.
Here again, political analyst Yalfimau lied. They were postponed to February 2022 - they took place five days before Russia attacked Ukraine. It turns out that this is the second time this year that Russia has held a strategic nuclear exercise.
That is, in fact, both Russia and NATO held planned exercises in October, which have been going on for quite a few years. However, because of the postponement, Moscow conducted them twice this year instead of once.