WARSAW: China is staging army drills with Belarus this week at NATO’s eastern border, in a sign of escalating tensions between Beijing and the US-led defence alliance. The joint “antiterrorist” exercises on Russian ally Belarus’s soil near the Polish border come as NATO leaders gather for a summit in Washington, with the war in nearby Ukraine high on their agenda.

With relations between NATO on the one hand and China and Russia on the other at a low ebb, analysts believe that Beijing wanted to send the alliance a warning message with the timing of the drills.

Sino-Belarusian exercises have taken place before, but this is the first time since Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine, a NATO ally, in February 2022.