Under the cover of military exercises in Belarus: will there be a breakthrough to Kyiv?

Under the guise of military exercises in Belarus, the Russian Federation may try to break through to Kyiv again, hoping for the “Georgian scenario” of 2008. Therefore, the authorities should take such threats seriously and not repeat the mistakes that were made at the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

This opinion was expressed on the air of “Pryamoy” by Myroslav Gai, a major in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, head of the “Mir i Ko” charitable foundation.

“The Zapad-2025 exercises are planned in Belarus by the Russian Federation. They are planned for September in fact. Not for the summer, but for mid-September. Russia plans to involve in these exercises, so far, if we speak from official reports, around 150 thousand servicemen. It is clear that where there are 150 thousand, there are also 200-250 thousand. In 2022, when Russia tried to surround Kyiv, they also used somewhere… They have a grouping of troops, then our partners officially provided this information, there was also somewhere around 150 thousand,” said Guy.

He recalled that no one believed in Russia’s offensive back then, because 150,000 is not a figure that is enough to capture Ukraine. “They were then focusing on a blitzkrieg, on a quick encirclement of Kyiv, that our government would flee, and they would bring in a conditional Medvedchuk, a kind of Ukrainian version of Kadyrov, and thus capture Ukraine politically,” the major of the Armed Forces of Ukraine added.

In his opinion, Russia is considering the so-called “Georgian option”, when in 2008 Russian troops reached Tbilisi, stopped 40 kilometers away and began negotiations, which later led to a change in the country’s political course in favor of the Kremlin.

“Russia views something like this as an attempt to influence Ukraine. They cannot seize Ukraine and capture Kyiv with such a grouping of troops of 150,000. They can try to reach Kyiv, create a threat to us, enter the Chernobyl zone, inflict damage on Kyiv not with missiles and shaheeds, but with some conventional weapons. To simply create an atmosphere of uncertainty and try to negotiate with us on their political terms. Whether they will succeed is a question of how well we prepare,” explains Guy.

At the same time, he expressed hope that under such a scenario, the events of 2022 would not be repeated, “when we only managed to transfer one battalion, and whoever found weapons ran to stop the Russians.”

“We all remember 2022. We will have time to prepare, because we are currently waging a war, we know that there will be exercises, we know, thanks to modern satellites, our partners, intelligence, we can already see how much and what kind of forces will be accumulated, and we can already prepare for a rebuff… Russia conducts such exercises solely with the aim of concentrating personnel and equipment on the borders, where they want to achieve some geopolitical goals. Therefore, of course, this is a threat to us. But I think that we will be vigilant, and I think that they will not be able to make an easy march,” emphasized Myroslav Gai, head of the Mir i Ko charity foundation.

It should be noted that recently, Deputy State Secretary of the Latvian Ministry of Defense Andis Dilans stated that up to 150,000 military personnel will participate in the Russian Zapad exercises, which will take place in Belarus in 2025.

Recall that in May 2025, Russian troops captured more territory than in almost any other month of a full-scale war. The Kremlin is betting on a large-scale summer military operation that should change the course of the war and force Ukraine to agree to concessions that would effectively mean surrender.

As is known, peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow have virtually stalled . In such conditions, Russia is trying to achieve a territorial breakthrough that would strengthen its negotiating position and sow doubts in Western capitals about further support for Ukraine. The Kremlin seeks to convince the world of Kyiv’s “inevitable defeat.”

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