Belarus Weekly: China, Belarus conduct joint drills near NATO, Ukraine borders

Belarus joins the Shanghai Cooperation Organization led by Russia and China, aiming for political legitimacy and developing “anti-sanction measures.”
Chinese and Belarusian militaries conduct joint drills near NATO and Ukraine borders.
Dictator Alexander Lukashenko releases 18 political prisoners while adding 17 more to the list.
Jailed son of former Belarusian presidential candidate faces new trial for alleged disobedience in prison, risking extended sentence.
The U.S. mission to OSCE says former Belarusian Ambassador Dzianis Sidarenka died under “unclear and disturbing circumstances.”
Belarus on July 4 joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or SCO, a Eurasian political, economic and defense organization led by Russia and China, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported, citing Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
Tokayev opened the second and final day of the SCO’s Astana summit by signing the documents to admit Belarus as the organization’s 10th member.
“In a short period (Belarus) has executed all necessary proceedings on its way to full-fledged membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Tokayev said when welcoming Belarus’ dictator Alexander Lukashenko to the summit.
Lukashenko outlined four core aims of Belarus’s membership in the organization, including working for international and food security, bolstering the economy, and burnishing the organization’s image worldwide. He reiterated his anti-western stance, declaring there was a need to “destroy the unipolar world” and “build genuine and indivisible global security,” which he said was something that the “narcissistic, selfish West was incapable of achieving.”
Lukashenko’s press service said he met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met with Lukashenko on the SCO summit’s sidelines, and expressed concern about the human rights situation in Belarus.
Guterres said he hoped that the recent release of some political prisoners would develop into “full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in Belarus.”
In an interview with Kazakh news agency Kazinform, Lukashenko said Belarus was ready to “consistently implement anti-sanctions measures” together with other SCO member states.
The SCO is an intergovernmental organization established by China and Russia in 2001 in Shanghai. Emerging from the “Shanghai Five” — an organization launched by Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan in 1996 to counter the spread of terrorism, separatism, and extremism in the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Belarus pursued SCO membership for nearly 15 years after becoming a partner state in 2010. It obtained observer status in 2015.
Apart from Belarus, the organization includes China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. It currently focuses on Eurasian political, economic, security, and defense issues.
“Today, the sprawling SCO has become a club for leaders of countries that are more or less comfortable communicating with each other,” Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, writes. “However, (the SCO) is unlikely to affect reality in any way – no matter how much the participating countries want to convince the world otherwise.”
Belarusian political analysts point out that by joining the SCO, Lukashenko received much-wanted political legitimization while hoping to reduce his regime’s economic dependency on Moscow. However, analysts do not expect Belarus to gain any significant boost to economic cooperation from its SCO membership.
The Chinese and Belarusian militaries are conducting joint “anti-terrorist training” at the Brestskiy training range next to the border with Ukraine and Poland, the Belarusian Defense Ministry reported on July 8.
According to the ministry, the joint force was practicing overcoming water obstacles and conducting operations in a populated area, as well as airborne training. The Brestskiy training range is located 2.8 kilometers from Belarus’s border with Poland, a NATO member state, and 28 kilometers away from the Ukrainian border.
A group of Chinese army personnel arrived in Belarus on July 6 for the “Attacking Falcon” exercises, which reportedly aim to “exchange experience, coordinate Belarusian and Chinese units, and create a foundation for the further development of Belarusian-Chinese relations in the field of joint training of troops,” said the Belarusian Defense Ministry.
The exercises are scheduled to be held on July 8-19.
Belarusian Hajun, a monitoring group that tracks the movement of Russian troops in Belarus, notes that the “Attacking Falcon” exercises are the latest in a series of Belarusian-Chinese military exercises, with the previous ones being held in Jinan, in China’s Shandong Province, in 2018.
The news of the joint exercises came days after Belarus, a key ally of Moscow, joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or SCO, which is led by China and Russia. The SCO is focused primarily on political, economic, and security issues.
Although China officially maintains a neutral stance on Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine and denies providing lethal aid to Moscow, Beijing and Moscow continue to strengthen their ties.
Eighteen political prisoners were released in Belarus on July 3 by order of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko ahead of the country’s official Independence Day celebrations, the Viasna Center for Human Rights reported on July 5.
Human rights advocates report that a total of four women and 14 men were released. Among them was Ryhor Kastusiou, the leader of the pro-democracy Belarusian Popular Front party. The 67-year-old Kastusiou, who had been sentenced to 10 years for the alleged conspiracy to seize power, was diagnosed with cancer in detention. He spent three years behind bars with deteriorating health without receiving the appropriate medical care.
Viasna did not disclose the names of the other released political prisoners, saying this was to prevent the former prisoners from suffering further persecution. Viasna said several other political prisoners were not released because they had refused to sign a request for a pardon.
Speaking on July 2, on the eve of Belarus’ official Independence Day celebration, Lukashenko, who excluded those convicted on political grounds from two earlier rounds of prisoner amnesties, suddenly announced that political prisoners suffering from severe diseases could be released.
“Don’t be surprised if in a few days very seriously ill people, ‘ours’ as they (the opponents of the regime) call them, the ones who didn’t manage to escape (from the country) and are in places not so remote (in detention), who were breaking and destroying (things), will be released,” Russia’s TASS state news agency quoted Lukashenko as saying.
Andrei Stryzhak, the head of the BYSOL Solidarity Foundation, an organization that fundraises for political prisoners and urgent evacuations from Belarus, said that the most elderly and sick political prisoners had been released. Furthermore, according to Stryzhak, five of the released prisoners would have been released anyway within a month as their sentences were coming to an end, and three more prisoners were set to be released in less than a year.
“This (sudden release) does not indicate serious or strategic changes in the human rights situation in Belarus,” Viasna Human Rights activist Pavel Sapelka.
The United States and the European Union welcomed the release of some Belarusian political prisoners, but still called for the unconditional release of all of them.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Smith said, “We welcome the news that some of Belarus’ most vulnerable political prisoners have been freed.” Meanwhile, European Union foreign affairs spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said the European Union noted the move, and was “relieved by the news that (the political prisoners) were finally reunited with their families and loved ones.”
Earlier, Belarusian democratic leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya demanded the full and unconditional liberation of at least 200 individuals on a “humanitarian” list of political prisoners in Belarus, including ones with disabilities, serious illnesses, and the elderly.
“Their urgent release is not a political issue, but a humanitarian one,” Tsikhanouskaya wrote on X.
And even as Lukashenko released 18 Belarusians, 17 new individuals were added to the political prisoners’ list by Viasna. The total number of recognized political prisoners as of July 8 thus reached 1,420, but human rights advocates believe the actual number could be as high as 5,000.
Eduard Babaryka, the jailed son of former Belarusian presidential candidate and political prisoner Viktar Babaryka, was put on trial again on July 9 for alleged “malicious disobedience” while in prison.
If found guilty, the 35-year-old Babaryka faces a sentence of two years on top of the eight-year term he is already serving after being convicted of “organizing mass disturbances,” “inciting hatred,” and “tax evasion.”
The Criminal Code of Belarus does not limit the number of charges of malicious disobedience that can be leveled against a prisoner, allowing a term behind bars to become virtually endless. Human rights activists in Belarus have recorded several cases of this particular charge being applied against 33 political prisoners, sometimes repeatedly.
Eduard Babaryka headed his father’s election campaign in the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus. He was detained along with his father on June 18, 2020, while en route to file signatures in favor of Viktar’s presidential candidacy. The detention effectively took Babaryka out of the presidential race.
Eduard Babaryka was convicted without the terms of his pre-trial detention — 18 months — being taken into account in the sentence. He dismissed the allegations as politically motivated and was declared as a political prisoner. In December 2023, he was branded by the courts as an “extremist” and “terrorist.”
The Viasna Human Rights Center reports that the penal colony administration has been holding Babaryka in solitary confinement since April 1.
His father, Viktar Babaryka, was considered one of Lukashenko’s main political opponents during the 2020 Belarusian presidential election. He is currently serving a 14-year sentence in Belarus. On April 27, 2023, Viktar was hospitalized with a collapsed lung and traces of severe beating. He has since been held incommunicado for over a year.
Former Belarusian Ambassador to Germany Dzianis Sidarenka died on June 23 “under circumstances that are unclear and very troubling,” the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires to the OSCE Katherine Brucker said at the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna on July 5.
Brucker recalled meeting Sidarenka as a young diplomat on his inaugural assignment at the OSCE in the early 2000s. The U.S. Charge d’Affaires said there were signs of torture on Sidarenka’s body. He is alleged to have committed suicide.
The 48-year-old Sidarenka spent the last eight years as Belarus’ ambassador to Germany until his dismissal from the post on March 11. The independent Belarusian media reported his death on June 26, on the day of his funeral.
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry confirmed the death of a former diplomat later that day without specifying the cause of death.
While some media suggest Sidarenka died of a heart attack, others allege that he committed suicide after failing to pass polygraph testing administered by Belarus’ KGB security agency. As former Belarusian diplomats explain, diplomats have to undergo polygraph testing if they want to continue working in the Belarusian Foreign Ministry upon returning from a posting abroad.
“The circumstances of Denis Sidarenka’s death are tragic and symbolize the criminal regime of Alexander Lukashenko,” said Thomas Hacker, a German lawmaker.
“If the accusations against the KGB are true, the perpetrators should be put on the EU sanctions list.”
The Belarusian regime has frequently concealed information about the sudden deaths of its officials. In July 2023, the Western-sanctioned 46-year-old Belarusian Minister of Transport and Communications, Aleksey Avramenko, died suddenly, with no official cause of death being released.
Less than a year earlier, Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei died unexpectedly in November 2022 at the age of 64.
Lukashenko attended Makei’s funeral but did not make any statement or comment about the cause of the minister’s death.