Russia begins massive war drill codenamed Vostok 2010

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China are in a Drill to Counter S.Korea-U.S. Exercise

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Russia begins massive war drill close to China border

Last Updated: Jun 29, 2010

Around 20,000 troops, 70 warplanes and 30 warships are expected to take part in Vostok 2010.

MOSCOW (PTI): Russia is beginning a 10-day unprecedented military drill in the eastern parts of the country involving tens of thousands of troops, air and naval combat units, seen as Moscow's largest post-Soviet wargames close to the borders with China.

Chief of the General Staff Army Gen Nikolai Makarov on Monday said the strategic exercise, codenamed Vostok 2010 (Orient-2010), will take place on June 29 through July 8 involving combat units from the Far Eastern, Siberian and Volga-Urals military districts, as well as the Pacific Fleet.

“This exercise... is not directed against any concrete country or military-political bloc. It has a purely defensive nature in ensuring the security and national interests of the state in the Far East,” Gen Makarov underscored amid the media speculations about Moscow preparing for war with China.

As part of the drills, the Armed Forces will practice the deployment of additional troops in Siberia and the Far East to reinforce the existing military contingent in the region in case of a military conflict, he said.

According to RIA Novosti, at least 20,000 troops, up to 70 warplanes and 30 warships will participate in the wargames.

As part of the preparations for the wargames Russia has been practicing the redeployment of its Sukhoi Su-24M and Su-34 bombers from western bases to the Far East with two mid-air refuelling.

The state-run Rossiya TV showed impressive footage of mid-air refuelling of latest multirole Su-34 bombers over the Urals, half way to their destination in the Far East.

Earlier reports suggest that crack combat units of the Russian Northern and Black Sea Fleets, including nuclear powered 'Pyotr Veliky' (Peter-the-Great) cruiser will also take part in the wargames in the close vicinity of China, Japan and two Koreas.

Last year, Russia and Belarus had held similar wargames in the west, simulating attack and counter-attack on NATO member states along the Russian borders.

[American Patriot]

One wrong step... POW... RIGHT in the KISSER!

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Russian warships hone anti-submarine warfare skills in Sea of Japan

Topic: Vostok 2010 Operation and Strategic Training


Russian warships hone anti-submarine warfare skills in Sea of Japan

14:00 01/07/2010
© RIA Novosti. Vitaly Anjkov

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• Warships from three Russian fleets ply the Sea of Japan

Warships from the Russian Pacific Fleet started on Thursday a series of anti-submarine warfare drills in the Sea of Japan as part of the Vostok-2010 strategic exercises in Russia's Far East.

"Ships and aircraft from the Pacific Fleet are practicing anti-submarine search-and-destroy missions to ensure favorable operational conditions in the Primorye joint task force's zone of control," said Capt. 1st Rank Roman Martov, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet.

The Russian Armed Forces started on Tuesday large-scale Vostok-2010 military exercises in Siberia and the country's Far East. The drills, which involve at least 20,000 troops, up to 70 warplanes and 30 warships, will continue through July 8.

Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, stressed on Monday that the drills were not aimed against any one country.

Russia holds Vostok strategic command-and-staff exercises every two years. More than 8,000 troops took part in Vostok-2008.

VLADIVOSTOK, July 1 (RIA Novosti)

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Vostok-2010 Games: A Test Of Russia's New Army

Tuesday, 06 July 2010 09:39
Written by RIA Novosti

By Ilya Kramnik

The Vostok-2010 strategic war games were the largest exercise Russia held in the last few years. Held at dozens of ranges from the Altai in southwest Siberia to Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast, the games aim to strengthen the new elements of Russia's army.

These new elements include the inter-arms command, with joint staffs commanding units from different arms. This allows strategic command to control the troops involved in real time, focusing their efforts more promptly on the required target.

The second element is a new structure of the Russian army. It has been changed from a four-level command system (military district, army, division, regiment) to a three-level system (strategic command, tactical command, brigade).

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov told the media that their main goal is to test the new system in practice. "The goal of the exercise is to see how the new structure works, to check whether our decisions were correct, and if necessary, to change them," he said.

The third element is mobility. In view of strength reductions and gradual transition from a conscripted to a professional army, groups of forces in the given theater of operations should be reinforced first of all with troops promptly moved from other areas. This puts special requirements to the combat readiness of units and formations, which must be ready for rapid redeployment and be highly mobile strategically and tactically.

The Vostok-2010 war games included flights of frontline bombers with midair refueling. Many motorized and air defense units also covered long distances by rail and in self-propelled mode.

The war games did not have a designated enemy; the troops trained in different strategic and tactical moves simply to enhance their combat unity against any enemy.

However, the territory of the war games is a telling sign, as their plan includes repelling an attack by an enemy landing group and air strikes and directing one's own landing troops against the enemy. Although the military say the goal of the games is purely defensive, this is a clear demonstration of Russia's intention and ability to protect its Siberian and Far Eastern territories.

The naval part of the games includes, apart from the Pacific Fleet, also the heavy missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky from the Northern Fleet and the missile cruiser Moskva from the Black Sea Fleet and Baltic Fleet marines. This shows that Russia can relatively quickly reinforce its Pacific Fleet with warships from its other fleets.

Changes in the command structure of the Russian army will not resolve its other problems, such as the shortage of modern weapons and inadequate training of personnel.

A new army needs new officers. The methods of warfare have changed so much in the past decades that officers now need to have broader military knowledge to be able to command and coordinate inter-service groups, and also better civilian skills allowing them to act as managers, diplomats, financiers and lawyers. Taken together, these skills will allow modern officers to be more flexible in a situation that implies a broad use of non-military methods of conflict settlement and to be highly selective as regards military instruments.

In fact, the industrialized Western countries put these requirements to their officers, in particular high-ranking ones. In Western armies, officers hold a variety of related posts during their carrier, which makes them versatile professionals. Russia has only entered this path.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

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Vostok-2010 – Unprecedented War Games in Full Swing in Russia’s Far East

Posted on Ana Nivtova on July 5, 2010




Over 20,000 troops, 70 combat planes as well as 30 Russian warships are taking part in the Vostok-2010 war games currently active in several Russian regions bordering China and Mongolia. The war games began June 29 and will continue until July 8.

For the first time in Russia’s modern history these military exercises are acted out together with warships of three fleets, the Black Sea, Pacific and Northern Fleets reports The Hindu.com. The exercises also involve Sukhoi Su-24M frontline bombers and Su-34 multi-role fighters, which were redeployed from bases in Western Russia 8,000 km away. The war planes completed non-stop flights with two successful in-flight refueling.

The exercises will include the firing of live ammunition, simulated airborne assaults and amphibious assault landings.

Military analyst Alexander Golts affirmed that “Russia is conducting these operations to reassure itself it can still control these sparsely populated regions,”. Chief of the General Staff Army Gen Nikolai Makarov said “This exercise… is not directed against any concrete country of military-political blox. It has purely defensive nature in ensuring the security of national interests of the state in the Far East,”

Chinese military officials attend Vostok-2010

According to the press service of the Siberian military district, a Chinese military delegation arrived in Siberia on Sunday, to attend the Vostok-2010 military exercises.

“The Chinese delegation will attend a key phase of the Vostok-2010 drills at the Tsugol training grounds,” the press service said in a statement.

Russian military war Games

Russian war games held last year, simulated attack and counter-attack on NATO member states along the Russian borders. Russia’s Vostok strategic command-and-staff exercises are held every two years.

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Russian military conducts drill on disputed Etorofu Island

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (Kyodo) -- The Russian military conducted a drill on Etorofu, one of the four islands off Hokkaido disputed between Japan and Russia, over the weekend, despite a request by Japan not to do so, according to Russian military personnel.

A press officer in the military's Far East district told Kyodo News that the drill conducted on Saturday and Sunday was "the largest-scale exercise held on the disputed islands since the collapse of Soviet Union" in 1991.

It immediately drew criticism from Japan, with Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada expressing "deep regret" over the military exercise.

Okada told reporters in Yokkaichi in central Japan's Mie Prefecture that Japan cannot accept the use of a training camp on Etorofu Island by the Russian military and has mounted a protest to Moscow through diplomatic channels.

"We have a different political standpoint (over the island) but such an incident has never occurred before as far as we know. In that sense, it is regrettable," Okada said. "I wonder why they conducted the drill at this time."

According to an announcement dated Sunday by the Russian Defense Ministry, the drill on Etorofu Island was part of the Vostok 2010 strategic exercises in the Russian Far East and Siberia, which began June 29 and will continue through Thursday.

The drill on Etorofu involved about 1,500 soldiers and a total of 200 military vehicles and special-purpose vehicles, it said.

Okada warned Russia against holding a drill on the disputed island last Friday, but a source at the Russian Foreign Ministry brushed aside the warning, telling Itar-Tass news agency the same day that Russia "has the right to choose the place of exercises."

About 10,000 servicemen are taking part in the drill, which also involves all the fleets of Russia -- Pacific, North, Black Sea and Baltic -- as well as Air Force units, according to the news agency.

Itar-Tass quoted Russian Armed Forces Gen. Nikolai Makarov, who is supervising the exercises, as saying the drill is not targeted at any real country but aimed at ensuring "defense of national interests from a presumed enemy on the Far Eastern borders."

The bilateral row over the islands of Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan and the Habomai islet group has prevented the two countries from signing a post-World War II peace treaty.

The four islands are known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as the Southern Kurils.

(Mainichi Japan) July 7, 2010

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One more "tick" of the time bomb....

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Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Communist Bloc Military Updates: Medvedev observes Vostok 2010 drills from missile cruiser, Makarov denies specific country, bloc of nations targeted



- Russian Air Force Test-Lands Ka-27 and Ka-52 Combat Choppers on French Navy's Amphibious Assault Ship during Port of Call at St. Petersburg

- Leaders of Eurasian Economic Community Converge in Astana to Enforce Implementation of New Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus

The Kazakh opposition claims that Russia is using the Customs Union to restore the Soviet empire.

-- Alexei Vlasov, Director, Center for the Study of Political Processes in the CIS, Moscow State University; Novosti, July 2, 2010

On Sunday President Dmitry Medvedev boarded the nuclear-powered missile cruiser Peter the Great to observe the naval phase of the biannual Vostok (East) military drill in the Sea of Okhotsk. Former Gazprom chairman Medvedev began his political career in the Soviet Komsomol and is widely perceived as a pliable pawn in the hands of Russia’s KGB-communist dictator, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Vostok 2010 began on June 29 at various military training sites in Russia’s Far East and involved some 10,000 troops and 1,000 items of military hardware. The first, land-based phase of the drills ended on Saturday, while the second phase will continue until July 8. In addition to Peter the Great, which is commissioned with the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet, based out of Murmansk, the Black Sea Fleet’s missile cruiser Moskva will also participate. The Pacific Fleet’s missile cruiser Varyag lately weighed anchor in San Francisco in a friendly, once-in-a-century port of call. The Black Sea Fleet’s home port is Sevastopol in the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, while the Pacific Fleet is based out of Vladivostok.

Prior to the maneuvers, General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, explained that Vostok 2010 would include live-fire drills and simulated airborne assaults and amphibious landings. The Russian Ground Forces will also practice the deployment of additional troops in Siberia and the Far East to reinforce the existing military contingents in the region.

Makarov emphasized that the Vostok 2010 drills were not aimed against any country. “This exercise...is not directed against any specific country or military-political bloc. It has a purely defensive nature in ensuring the security and national interests of the [Russian] state in the Far East,” he explained. During the 1980s Makarov was a battalion commander in the Soviet Group of Forces in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

Realistically speaking, though, the only state that is in a position to challenge the Kremlin’s hegemony over the sparsely settled Russian Far East is the People’s Republic of China, the world’s most populous country. Since the world congress of communists that took place in Moscow in 1960, the Russian and Chinese Communists are still committed to advancing global proletarian revolution, by deception, pseudo-capitalism, or conquest as necessary. Until 2001, when Moscow and Beijing signed the ground-breaking Treaty of Cooperation and Good Neighborliness, the Soviets and Red Chinese feigned disunity and even hostility in the so-called “Sino-Soviet split.” Still, cultural differences and residual nationalist sentiment no doubt stain the ideological purity of Russian and Chinese communism to this day. We strongly suspect that there is a lingering distrust between the RF and PRC, in spite of their common devotion to the same ideology.

Alternately, it is possible that the Russian Armed Forces’ Vostok drills represent a preparation for war on the Korean Peninsula, especially a confrontation with the USA, which has 27,000 soldiers stationed in the Republic of Korea. Soviet troops occupied the northern part of Korea at the end of the Second World War, helping the Korean Workers’ Party to set up the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Five years later, the North Korean army invaded and attacked the South, with a little help from hundreds of thousands of People’s Liberation Army troops and Soviet pilots flying DPRK fighter jets.



During Vostok 2010 the Russian military once again, as it did in last September’s Zapad (West) 2009 drill, tested its new command structure, which was altered from the Soviet era’s four-level system (military district, army, division, regiment) to a three-level system (strategic command, tactical command, brigade). Since the Kremlin intends to transform Russia’s military from a conscripted army into a somewhat smaller, professional force, unit mobility and combat readiness are imperative.

“The Vostok-2010 war games,” state-run Novosti elaborates, “included flights of frontline [tactical] bombers with midair refueling. Many motorized and air defense units also covered long distances by rail and in self-propelled mode.” Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov acknowledged that “The goal of the exercise is to see how the new structure works, to check whether our decisions were correct, and if necessary, change them.” Incidentally, Serdyukov is son in law to current Gazprom chairman and former prime minister Viktor Zubkov.

Graduating a whole new cadre of military officers, skilled in waging 21st-century warfare, is another imperative for Russia’s military reforms. Novosti editorializes:

A new army needs new officers. The methods of warfare have changed so much in the past [two] decades that officers now need to have broader military knowledge to be able to command and coordinate inter-service groups, and also better civilian skills allowing them to act as managers, diplomats, financiers and lawyers. Taken together, these skills will allow modern officers to be more flexible in a situation that implies a broad use of non-military methods of conflict settlement and to be highly selective as regards military instruments.

In fact, the industrialized Western countries put these requirements to their officers, in particular high-ranking ones. In Western armies, officers hold a variety of related posts during their carrier, which makes them versatile professionals. Russia has only entered this path.

Clearly, the Soviet strategists, observing the Russian army’s failures in the 2008 Georgia campaign, not to mention the failed test-launches of the new Bulava SLBM, are anxious to create a fighting force that can challenge NATO. For this reason, as we have blogged before, the Kremlin is swallowing its pride in order to fast-track military modernization by simply buying equipment, armaments, and vessels from the very countries it intends to attack one day. In April, Mikhail Dmitriev, chief of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation, confirmed that Moscow will close the much-discussed Mistral deal with Paris by the end of 2010.

To equip these four amphibious assault ships, one to be purchased and three to be built under license, the Russian Air Force will procure at least 100 combat helicopters from the Kumertau Aviation Production Enterprise.

“During a visit by Mistral to St. Petersburg [in November 2009], we tested the landing of our Ka-27 Helix and Ka-52 Alligator helicopters on the vessel. Currently, the state armament program stipulates the purchase of several dozens helicopters for this deal,” admitted Vyacheslav Kovalyov, first deputy director of Kumertau. He added: “The Russian Air Force plans to buy the Ka-52 Alligator, Ka-226 Hoodlum helicopters and a new modification of the Ka-27 helix helicopter, the Ka-27M, the development of which is now in its final stage.”

A “high-ranking source” in the Kremlin’s United Industrial Corporation (OPK) confirmed that the air force will buy up to 100 Ka-class helicopters, including some 70 Ka-27M choppers, to equip Mistral ships.

“Many Russian military and industry experts have questioned the financial and military sense of the purchase,” concedes Novosti, “and some believe that Russia simply wants to gain access to advanced naval technology that could be used in the future in potential conflicts with NATO and its allies.” Indeed.

Meanwhile, the Soviet strategists continue to patiently assemble the building blocks for the restored, revitalized Soviet Union. Three of these building blocks are the Commonwealth of Independent States, which immediately replaced the USSR in November 1991; the Union State of Russia and Belarus, formed in 1997; and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which partly replaces the Warsaw Pact, dismantled in 1991. Two others are the Eurasian Economic Community (Eurasec) and the brand-new Customs Union of Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus.

The Interstate Council of Eurasec, which doubles as the supreme body of the Customs Union, will hold meetings in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, on July 5. The heads of these “former” Soviet republics plan to sign a joint statement on the enforcement of the Customs Code Treaty, which came into effect on July 1, within the framework of Eurasec. In addition to Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan, Eurasec encompasses strife-torn Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

During the Third Astana Economic Forum on July 1 and 2, Kazakhstan’s long-ruling “ex”-communist president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, complained “that the potential of Europe-Asia interaction has so far not been used in full, but there is hope that the enforcement of a common document on the fundamental norms of Eurasian integration will help consolidate rival projects in the region, giving them a common ideology and development goals.”

We rather suspect that the “common ideology and development goals” of the Eurasec leaders are a “friendly” form of communism. By contrast, reports Novosti, “the Kazakh opposition claims that Russia is using the Customs Union to restore the Soviet empire.” The Kazakh opposition is correct, but its candor will lead to its demise.

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