MINSK, Nov 29 - Belarus has announced joint military exercises with Russia along its southern border as NATO gathers for a meeting to discuss its concerns about the Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, RFE RL reported Monday.

Belarusian Defense Minister Viktar Khrenin said on November 21 that the exercises would be held on its border with Ukraine in the "medium term."

He did not provide a date for the exercises with Russia, but suggested they were in response to alleged new military deployments in countries to the west and south of Belarus.

"We see troop formations around our state borders.... We can only be concerned by the militarization of our neighboring countries, which is why we are forced to plan measures in response," Khrenin said in comments on his ministry's website.

NATO has deployed four international battle groups to defend Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia since 2017.

The battalion-sized units were deployed in response to Russia's illegal seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and Russia's support for separatists fighting against Kyiv's forces in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow has denied planning to invade the Baltics or Poland, but has raised alarms among NATO members by assembling a large number of troops near Russia's western border with Ukraine.

Commenting on his meeting with Latvian President Egils Levits in Riga ahead of a November 30 NATO foreign ministers meeting, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia to be "transparent, reduce tensions, and deescalate."

On November 29, Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka clearly suggested that the country would join its ally, Russia, in the event the simmering conflict in Ukraine broke out into open warfare.

"It is clear whose side Belarus will be on," he said of Russia, which has provided financial and political support to Lukashenka amid ongoing protests against the longtime leader's disputed presidential victory in August 2020.

The same day, Lukashenka also discussed the situation by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the Kremlin, and gave orders to raise troop readiness.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told foreign media on November 29 that Russia had amassed 115,000 troops and heavy weapons near his country's border, on the occupied territory of Crimea, and in parts of the two eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine occupied by the separatists.

"It's better to act now, not later" to "deter Russia," Kuleba said. "What we are seeing is very serious."

"If Russia decides to undertake a military operation, things will happen in literally the blink of an eye," he said, adding that Ukrainian forces were stronger today than they were when the separatist conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people began in 2014. (om/ez)