Their presence seemed implausible three and a half years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But there the two American military observers were on Monday, standing on a viewing platform in Belarus, as that country’s military held joint exercises with the same Russian Army that continues to pound Ukraine in defiance of President Trump.
Belarus, which has been trying to improve relations with the United States even as it remains dependent on Russia and an enabler of its war, seemed to revel in the U.S. attendance at the war games, called Zapad 2025.
Belarusian military officials framed the Americans’ visit, several days into the joint exercises, as a happy surprise and urged them to have a look wherever they liked. “Who could have thought how the morning of another day of Zapad 2025 exercises would start,” the Belarus Defense Ministry wrote on its Telegram channel.
After shaking hands with the U.S. officials, Defense Minister Viktor G. Khrenin told them that “we are not hiding anything.”
“We will show you whatever is interesting for you, whatever you want,” Mr. Khrenin continued, instructing his subordinate to take the delegation to “the best places.” The Americans looked on as the war games unfolded, with a country resembling Belarus fighting off a group of invaders and waiting for help from a larger neighboring state.
A reporter for The New York Times who attended the exercises approached the U.S. representatives, but they were not willing to speak. Belarus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs identified one of them as Lt. Col. Brian Patrick Shoupe, the defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Belarus. The embassy was moved to neighboring Lithuania shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine.
The Americans’ appearance was a remarkable turn of events. The exercises, conducted every four years, were initially conceived to imagine how Russia would defend itself against an invasion by a member of NATO, an alliance whose most powerful member is the United States. Tensions between NATO and Moscow have soared after several Russian drones entered Poland almost a week ago and another Russian drone flew above Romania over the weekend.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 occurred months after the Zapad 2021 exercise, with Russian soldiers sweeping through Belarus as they rushed toward Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Belarus also allowed the Kremlin to use Belarusian training bases after a large-scale Russian mobilization campaign in September 2022, and it sells military equipment to Russia.
Still, Belarus on Monday portrayed itself as a peacemaker of sorts.
“It is hard to imagine the kind of openness that we are showing and ensuring at the exercise,” Mr. Khrenin, the defense minister, said later. Belarus, he added, is “interested in reducing tensions in the Eastern European region and are taking real practical steps to achieve this.”
Russia had a more belligerent message for NATO, which was also represented at the Zapad exercises by officials from Turkey and Hungary. The Kremlin has long considered itself at war with NATO because it provides direct and indirect support to Ukraine.
“NATO is de facto involved in this war,” a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said during a phone call with reporters on Monday. He added, “It can be said with absolute certainty that NATO is fighting against Russia.”
This was not the first time American observers have been invited to the Zapad exercises. They last attended in 2017, said Artyom Schraibman, a Belarusian political analyst at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center who lives in exile. But at that time Belarus’s autocratic leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, had much better relations with Washington and the European Union.
That Russia’s closest ally would invite American observers this year was surprising, “given the overall regional crisis and the context of war and the fact that Belarus is a Russian ally,” Mr. Schraibman said.
Their presence, he added, could be read as part of a thawing of relations, which significantly deteriorated in 2020 when Mr. Lukashenko brutally cracked down against a protest movement that threatened his rule. They worsened further after Russia used Belarus as a staging ground for its Ukraine invasion.
In the past year, Mr. Lukashenko has sought a rapprochement with Washington, a relationship that has been intensifying as the strongman has freed hundreds of political prisoners in exchange for some sanctions relief. Part of the ongoing discussions between Belarus and the United States have focused on bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.
Last week, John Coale, the deputy to Keith Kellogg, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, met with Mr. Lukashenko, carrying a letter from the president and expressing hope of reopening the embassy in Minsk. As the men were speaking, 52 Belarusian political prisoners were whisked to Lithuania.
Belarus said military personnel from 23 countries observed this year’s war games, including more traditional Russian allies like China, Cuba and Serbia.
According to the Defense Ministry, about 6,000 soldiers from Belarus participated. It said that about 1,000 Russians had also taken part, though independent analysts said the number was lower. In previous years, when Russia was not at war, it sent 20 to 30 times as many troops, said Konrad Muzyka, a Warsaw-based independent defense analyst focused on Russia and Belarus.
Mr. Muzyka said the openness Belarus sought to project arose from Mr. Lukashenko’s desire to remain relevant as a geopolitical player, even as his country’s economy and politics remain firmly under Russia’s shadow.
“Lukashenko wants to see himself as the broker between East and West,” Mr. Muzyka said. “He wants to be seen as the middleman, the most important person in this part of Europe that will help bury the hatchet in Ukraine.”
Valerie Hopkins covers the war in Ukraine and how the conflict is changing Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the United States. She is based in Moscow.
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