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The Khoiniki district of Belarus’s Gomel region — which borders Ukraine — convened heads of local organizations and civil defense specialists to prepare for a comprehensive territorial emergency exercise, according to the district newspaper Khoinitskiye Novosti.

The seminar preceded what officials described as a complex drill of the district’s link in the Gomel territorial emergency and civil defense subsystem. District executive committee chairman Dmitry Shpiganovich and district emergency department head Viktor Satsura told participants that the core objective was to ensure “organized and rapid response by all services to possible emergencies of any nature.”

What the drill covers

At the seminar, participants were shown a video outlining the planned exercise in stages. According to the newspaper’s account, the scenario combined standard emergency training with something less routine: alongside flooding of residential areas and utility network failures — including water and heating cutoffs — organizers included “conditional” rocket strikes with a mass number of casualties.

“Special attention was focused on improving the warning system and the set of population protection measures,” the publication noted.

Participants also discussed how non-military civil defense units operate at facilities, how field drills and training sessions are conducted, and how information on emergencies is transmitted between services.

Wider context

The drill comes against a backdrop of sharply elevated regional tension. On 15 May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a meeting with the heads of intelligence structures, the Defense Ministry, and the Security Service, and afterward stated that Russia plans strikes against Ukraine or a NATO country launched from Belarusian territory. Kyiv has previously warned that Russia could repeat what it did in 2022.

According to Zelenskyy, Ukraine has information that “additional contacts took place between the Russians and Aliaksandr Lukashenka, aimed at persuading him to join new Russian aggressive operations.”

Belarus has also seen a steady flow of stray drones. Belarusian military officials stated that last year there were allegedly more than 1,400 violations of Belarusian airspace rules. Deputy Interior Minister Nikolai Karpyenkov said that in 2025 alone, around 520 drones had been defused in Belarus, with every third one classified as a combat drone.

Authorities rarely acknowledge drone incursions publicly, typically doing so only after reports surface on social media or in independent outlets — as happened when drones were downed over Gomel in September 2024, and when a drone fell on a residential area of Minsk in July 2025.

The regional pressure was underscored on 17 May, when a Belavia aircraft flying from Moscow to Gomel was unable to land at Gomel airport due to a Russian drone attack on Ukraine. The flight was redirected to Minsk.

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