, Columnist
The Zapad Military Exercise Reveals Putin's Fear
If war breaks out with the West, it's most likely to start in "Veyshnoria."
Show and tell.
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The large-scale Russian military exercise known as Zapad, which started in Belarus on Thursday, is already a propaganda success: It has alarmed Russia's North Atlantic Treaty Organization neighbors and garnered so much Western media coverage that one might think it was an actual combat operation. But it has also provided an important insight into the fears of the Russian and Belarusian rulers, fears that are not necessarily groundless.