Russia to hold biggest military exercise since Cold War era

Russia is to hold its biggest military manoeuvres since the height of the Cold War next month, mobilising about 300,000 troops and including the participation of thousands of soldiers from China, defence minister Sergei Shoigu said.

The Vostok-2018 exercises in Russia’s eastern and central military districts — from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific coast — from September 11 to 15 will involve almost a third of the country’s soldiers, making the exercises the largest since 1981, Shoigu said. Some 1,000 aircraft and both the Northern and Pacific fleets will be deployed.

“Imagine 36,000 tanks and armoured personnel carriers all moving at the same time,” the minister said. “This will all be tested under conditions as close as possible to war.”

Russia stoked alarm a year ago with major war games on its western flank bordering Poland and the Baltic states. Nato said those manoeuvres involved 100,000 troops — far above the 13,000 soldiers that Russian officials said took part. Next month’s military exercises will be the most ambitious since the “Zapad-81” drills in 1981.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the drills are needed to ensure Russia’s military capabilities “in the current international situation, which is often quite aggressive unfriendly to our country.”

Vasily Kashin, a senior fellow at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Kremlin is “preparing for possible conflict” amid the chilliest relations with the US for decades.

Such large manoeuvres are aimed “partly at showing our and preparedness and partly to increase our actual readiness for war. The situation is bad.”

China, which has steadily tightened ties with Moscow in recent years, will contribute 3,200 troops and 30 aircraft.

“This is a new step. It’s the first time Chinese forces have been allowed in internal manoeuvres, not joint ones,” said Kashin. “For the moment, there’s no sign that Russia and China are preparing a full military alliance, but on the military level, that’s what’s happening.”

Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said the Chinese participation is evidence of “the expansion of co-operation in all areas between two allies.”