Skip to main content

Russia to hold biggest war games

August 29, 2018 | Expert Insights

Russia will in next month hold the biggest war games since the Cold War era, with almost 300,000 troops and 1,000 aircraft, the defense minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday.

Background

A military exercise or a war game serves the purpose of ensuring the combat readiness of the deployable forces prior to deployment from home base. The Soviet Union carried out its largest military exercise in 1981, known as Zapad-81 which lasted approximately for 8 days, involving between 100,000 and 150,000 Soviet and other Warsaw Pact military personnel. 

It was notable for its show of mighty military force to the world. The exercise tested a number of new weapons systems, including the SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missile (later banned by the INF Treaty). The exercise also introduced new concepts, such as the Operational Maneuver Group, which sought to inject a strong armored force deep behind NATO’s front line to sever supply lines and destroy tactical nuclear weapons.

The Zapad exercises were later held in 1984, 1985 and later on in 2009, 2013 and 2017. Though these exercises were held a handful of times, Zapad-2013 like the original exercise, tested new equipment and new concepts.

Analysis

The Vostok-2018, or East 18, exercises simulating large-scale warfare, will be carried out from Sept 11 to 15 in the country's east, with units from China and Mongolia also taking part.

They come as Russia is hit by the latest round of US sanctions and faces even harsher ones over its alleged role in a nerve agent attack in Britain, with its relations with the West at their lowest ebb since the Cold War.

NATO said it saw the games as signs of "a more assertive Russia".

Sergei Shoigu said the exercises would be similar in size to those held in September 1981 by the Soviet authorities, called Zapad-81, or West 81.

These were unprecedented at the time in terms of the number of troops and military hardware, with around 100,000 troops involved, Russian television reported.

"This will be something of a repeat of Zapad-81, but in some senses even bigger," Shoigu said in comments reported by Russian news agencies.

NATO spokesman Dylan White said that since Vostok-2018 would take place east of the Ural Mountains, Moscow was not obliged to notify the West or invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, although an invitation had been extended to military attaches.

The planned drill showed "a more assertive Russia, significantly increasing its defense budget and its military presence," White said.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov defended the drills, telling journalists that spending state funds on the country’s defense capabilities was “justified, necessary and the only option”, despite the country’s economic problems.

Defence minister Shoigu said the drills "are on an unprecedented scale both in terms of the area covered and in terms of the numbers" of military forces.

"More than 1,000 aircraft, almost 300,000 troops and almost all the firing ranges of the Central and Eastern military districts" would be involved, he said. "Imagine 36,000 pieces of military equipment moving together at the same time - tanks, armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles. And all of this, of course, in conditions as close to combat as possible."

Russian troops underwent snap checks of their combat-readiness last week and Russia has already sent around 30 fighter planes to aerodromes in eastern Siberia, the defense ministry said. Chinese troops have also begun arriving by train with their equipment in the region east of Lake Baikal, the ministry said.

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has massively upgraded its military equipment and modernized the armed forces, which have demonstrated their increased strength in operations in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

While having a practical purpose of testing military skills, drills are also designed to show a country's potential opponents how it could behave in a real conflict situation.

Moscow said last year's Zapad-2017 military drills, conducted in ally Belarus and western regions of Russia, had roughly 12,700 troops taking part, raising eyebrows in NATO members Poland and the Baltic states.

NATO claimed Russia could have been massively underreporting the scale of the exercises, which some of the alliance's eastern members said involved more than 100,000 servicemen.

In 2015, Russia held drills involving 80,000 troops in regions spanning the country from the Arctic in the far east to the southern Caucasus.

A year later it held spectacular land, sea and air exercises in Crimea, annexed by Moscow from Ukraine in 2014.

Assessment

Our assessment is that the Chinese participation demonstrates that China and Russia are moving towards a strategic alliance. We believe that the war games are likely to displease Japan, which has complained about a Russian military build-up in the Asia-Pacific. We feel that the war games clearly signals Russia’s intent to reposition itself as a geopolitical and military power in the 21st century.