The Russian military’s chief of staff arrived in Central Asia Thursday as Russia held military drills in two ex-Soviet countries bordering Afghanistan where Kabul is struggling to contain a ferocious Taliban offensive.

Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian military’s General Staff flew into Uzbekistan — Central Asia’s most populous country — to observe joint Russian-Uzbek military drills. Both armies also took part in separate exercises with neighboring Tajikistan on Thursday. Source Moscow Times

Poland accused Belarus of sending a growing number of migrants over the border in retaliation for Warsaw’s decision this week to give refuge to Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a Belarusian athlete who refused to return home from the Tokyo Olympics.

A deputy interior minister, Maciej Wasik, said on Thursday that Minsk was “waging a hybrid war with the European Union with the help of illegal immigrants”. Suorce Reuters

The Black Sea is becoming a zone of dangerous military confrontation, warned Yuri Pilipson, director of the Fourth European Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, according to local press.

The diplomat assured the RIA Novosti news agency that the military exercises of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) affect the security of the region, and that is quite obvious that this causes, and does not prevent, conflict situations, as he said. Source Pensa Latina

e U.S. State Department approved the potential sale of 40 155mm M109A6 Medium Self-Propelled Howitzer artillery systems to Taiwan in a deal valued at up to $750 million, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. Source Reuters

A spokesperson for the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, the Dutch military service that carries out police tasks, reports this to the ANP news agency. There will be mobile checks at the border between Belgium and the Netherlands, but not at those with Germany. Source De Tijd

China has welcomed Russian troops to hold joint strategic drills for the first time next week on the territory of the People’s Republic as part of growing ties between Beijing and Moscow. Source Newsweek

Two rockets launched from Lebanon on Wednesday struck Israel, which responded with artillery fire amid heightened regional tensions over an alleged Iranian attack on an oil tanker in the Gulf last week. Israel’s Magen David Adom national ambulance service said there were no casualties on the Israeli side of the hilly frontier, where the rockets ignited a brush fire. Source Reuters