The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a world war axis, at work.
Russia’s upcoming joint military exercise with China and Mongolia, set for September 11 – 15, will be the largest Russian drill in nearly 40 years according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who said they will be larger than the Soviet military’s 1981 Zapad-81 (West-81) exercises.
“In some ways they will repeat aspects of Zapad-81, but in other ways the scale will be bigger,” Shoigu told reporters from the Russian region of Khakassia.
The exercise, Vostok-2018 (East-2018), will occur in central and eastern Russian military districts, and will involve nearly 300,000 troops, over 1,000 military aircraft, two of Russia’s naval fleets, and their entire airborne forces, Shoigu said in a Tuesday statement.
“Imagine 36,000 armored vehicles — tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored infantry vehicles — moving and working simultaneously, and that all this, naturally, is being tested in conditions as close as possible to military ones,” said Shoigu.
Also included in the drills, as we mentioned Friday, will be the inclusion of simulated nuclear weapons attacks.
And according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will participate by sending about 3,200 elite forces troops, along with 30 fix-wing aircraft and helicopters to the Russian-hosted exercises.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to attend a forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok during the exercises, according to Reuters, while a Japanese Foreign Minister official said on Tuesday that Tokyo is monitoring developments between Beijing and Moscow.
The war games, which will take place from Sept. 11-15, are likely to worry Japan, which has already complained about a Russian military build-up in the Far East, something Moscow has linked to Tokyo’s roll-out of the Aegis U.S. missile system. –Reuters
The SCMP cites one Beijing based military expert, Zhou Chenming, to explain that the PLA is seeking to gain greater military experience as its last major combat theater stretches all the way back to the Vietnam War.
Additionally, Zhou told the SCMP, “China also wants to show its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is facing various diplomatic challenges, especially criticism from the US Secretary of State [Mike Pompeo] over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.” The Chinese military expert further cited that the games’ site location was chosen carefully and deliberately with this in mind.
“Putin wants to use the Russian military’s war games with the PLA to show its military muscle, but he doesn’t want to irritate the United States too much and raise the possibility of a misjudgment by the Trump administration, so he chose the less sensitive Trans-Baikal region in the Far East, far from US allies in Europe,” Zhou said.
Full article: Russia’s “Nuclear Combat” War Games Largest In Nearly 40 Years (ZeroHedge)
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