Russia tried out attack on NATO

RUSSIAN war games held last September “simulated a large-scale military attack against NATO”, the commander of the Estonian Defence Forces has claimed.

Riho Terras confirmed NATO’s fears that the Zapad (West) exercises were used to simulate a conflict with the US-led alliance and show off Russia’s ability to amass large numbers of troops at extremely short notice.

The drills – held in Belarus, the Baltic Sea and western Russia and its Kaliningrad outpost from September 14-20 – depicted a fictional scenario concerned with attacks by militants, according to Russia’s defence ministry.

But in an interview with German newspaper Bild ,Mr Terras said the exercise simulated a large-scale military attack against NATO.

“It was not targeted towards the Baltic states only ... the scale and extent of the entire exercise was far greater than officially stated,” he said

Instead of being a “purely defensive” exercise, as Russia claimed, Zapad was used to simulate a “full-scale conventional war against NATO in Europe”, Bild previously reported, citing two analysts from a Western intelligence service.

The analysts also told Bild the drill rehearsed a “shock campaign” against NATO countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, but also Poland and the non-NATO states of Sweden and Finland, including simulating bombings of “critical infrastructure”.