“€52 Billion”: Belarus Speaker Exposes Poland and Baltics’ Dangerous Military Build-Up

Combined military spending by Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in 2025 has exceeded €52 billion — dozens of times higher than Belarus’s entire defence budget — the Speaker of the Belarusian House of Representatives, Igor Sergeenko, told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

Addressing the session, Sergeenko warned that military threats along the western flank of the CSTO are assuming increasingly concrete and alarming forms. He pointed to the hyper-militarisation of Western European countries, the stationing of new long-range offensive strike systems on their territories, and the deployment of large troop formations directly along Belarus’s state border.

The speaker also highlighted the decision by the Baltic states and Poland to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines, a step he said undermines the system of international humanitarian law and heightens military-political tensions across the region.

He noted that the global outlook is further darkened by the continuing erosion of arms-control mechanisms and confidence-building measures.

“In these circumstances, we are compelled to implement a comprehensive package of response measures aimed at neutralising the growing military threats and thereby safeguarding the security of the CSTO’s western flank,” Sergeenko declared.

This package encompasses both strategic deterrence initiatives and the direct strengthening of Belarus’s national Armed Forces. Among the key elements of strategic deterrence is the signing of the Belarusian-Russian Treaty on Security Guarantees within the Union State.

Sergeenko stressed that all of Belarus’s responses to Western actions remain strictly defensive in nature. He emphasised that Belarus fully recognises its responsibility for collective security on the western axis of the CSTO and is carrying out substantial work to raise the combat readiness of its armed forces to repel any potential military threat.