Neighbourly Frisson
"Russia is acting on a faulty threat assessment and seeks to fashion a military response to largely imaginary threats and challenges that are not military in nature."
"It's all about strategic messaging of coercion and compellence directed at the U.S. and NATO, to prevent things the West has no intention of doing or the capability to accomplish."
Vladimir Frolov, independent foreign policy analyst, Moscow
"In 24 to 48 hours, some parts of the Russian armed forces could be ready to invade one Baltic state or all of them."
"It’s clear that it’s not only defense but it’s also about offense."
Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis
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The Zapad-2017 war games were mounted as an exercise-in-training against the sinister anti-Russian plans of three non-existent states. They were named as Veishnoriya, Lubeniya and Vesbasriya, proxies for the Baltic states whose alliance with Moscow's perceived Western enemies rate them as the games' targets to be challenged and militarily defeated. To that end, Russia and its sidekick Belarus brought out all the advanced military hardware it could muster to put on a Big Show with the intention of intimidating whomever it might.
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The production certainly rated high on the anxiety scale. Officials in the Baltics and Poland felt the tremors of 2014 when the games were the occasion to be used as a screen, riveting attention on Zapad-2014 while preparations were underway for Crimea's annexation and Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine, alongside the ethnic Russian Ukrainian rebels.
Russia's anxiety-ridden neighbours were fairly convinced of a certainty that Russian troops would number up to 100,000. According to a convention signed by Russia and Western nations, called the Vienna Document, all exercises whose troop presence exceeds 13,000 or 300 tanks would be expected to permit the presence of foreign monitors. As pointed out by Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO, Moscow understates troop numbers by tens of thousands.
This handily bypasses the need to permit the presence of monitors, interfering with Moscow's freedom to design the games as it sees fit, including the numbers participating. Zapad exercises this year came under conjecture as a hidden purpose given past scenarios, where Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, head of the U.S. Army forces in Europe, conjectured that Zapad was launched as a possible "Trojan horse", where Russian troops would be sent in to the games and many would remain.
In moving considerably greater numbers of troops into Belarus than would be withdrawn, a permanent military base would be established directly on the border with NATO countries. This theory fits well with Poland's and the Baltics' concerns about Vladimir Putin's plans. The exercise, commented Mr. Stoltenberg, fits a "pattern of a more assertive Russia, exercising more aggressively" to demonstrate "it is willing to use military force against its neighbours".
No so, Russia responds to Western concerns over its showcasing of new military technology. The exercises -- despite being conducted under the premise that three fictional countries must be defeated in response to their sinister plans to attack Russia -- are meant for defence, purely. No offence intended. Which is precisely the argument that North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran insist is their goal in achieving ICBM and nuclear efficiencies.
"We all hoped that the Cold War or something comparable would never happen again. So it is a kind of deja vu for me to be here", commented German Army Lt. Col. Thorsten Gensler, commander of the German-led, multinational NATO battalion deployed to Lithuania one of four such Baltic/Polish situated NATO-member battalions hoping to persuade Russia from attacking NATO territory.
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Labels: Conflict, East Europe, Military, Russia, Weapons
posted by Pieface @ Monday, September 25, 2017
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