Russia’s serious games
A SHOW of force involving tanks, paratroops, artillery, jets and helicopters is driving across Eastern Europe in a mock attack on the “Western Coalition”.
And Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the box seat.
Tracer bullets have been flashing over sodden fields. Tanks have been splashing through mud. Helicopters have been firing missiles through the gloom. Su24M bombers dived through the driving rain to hit their targets.
Mr Putin is attending the week-long war games with Belarus intended to demonstrate Russian resurgent might and make neighbouring countries nervous.
He arrived by helicopter to observe the Zapad (West) 2017 drills — tank attacks, airborne assaults and air raids that started last week — at the Luzhsky range in western Russia, 100km east of Estonia’s border.
But NATO has not been sitting idly by. It is hosting its war games — and NATO jets based in Lithuania have been repeatedly scrambled to observe unannounced Russian activity over the increasingly tense Baltic Sea.
Mr Putin skipped attending the 72nd UN General Assembly — despite the mounting international crisis centred on North Korea — to attend the military demonstration.
“The strike on ground targets was complicated by weather conditions: heavy precipitation, low clouds, and strong gusts of wind,” a Russian Defence Ministry report reads.
A highlight was the testfiring of an Iskander-M cruise missile at a mock target in Kazakhstan, showcasing the weapon’s extended range and precision strike capability.
The war games are focused on an imaginary insurgency inside Belarus, backed by three “Western allies” — Veishnoriya, Lubeniya and Vesbariya. However, the Baltic States — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — and Poland see the monikers for the made up enemies as thinly disguised references to their nations.
The first phase of the exercise involved defending against “extremist” attacks. Phase two involved a counterattack.
Russia and Belarus say 5500 Russian and 7200 Belarusian troops are taking part, but some NATO countries have estimated the true figure is closer to 100,000 troops.
Some nervous NATO members have criticised an alleged lack of transparency about the war games and questioned Moscow’s intentions.
With Russia’s relations with the West at a post-Cold War low point over the fighting in Ukraine, worries about the war games ranged from allegations that Russia could permanently deploy its forces to Belarus.
NATO has rotated military units in the Baltics and Poland and staged regular drills in the region, activities Moscow has criticised as a reflection of the alliance’s hostile intentions.