Fears of aggression after Russia military drills near Nato post
1 Aug 2017 5:50 PM GMT
Russia is preparing to send as many as 100,000 troops to the eastern edge of Nato territory at the end of the summer, one of the biggest steps yet in the military buildup undertaken by President Vladimir Putin and an exercise in intimidation that recalls the most ominous days of the Cold War.
The troops are conducting military maneuvers known as Zapad, Russian for "west," in Belarus, the Baltic Sea, western Russia and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. The drills will feature a reconstituted armored force named for a storied Soviet military unit, the First Guards Tank Army. Its establishment represents the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that so much offensive power has been concentrated in a single command.
The military exercise, planned for many months, is not a reaction to sweeping new economic sanctions on Russia that Congress passed last week.
So far, Russia has retaliated against the sanctions by forcing the expulsion of several hundred employees in US diplomatic posts in the country.
But the move is part of a larger effort by Putin to shore
up Russia's military prowess, and comes against the backdrop of an increasingly assertive Russia.
Beyond Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election in support of the Trump campaign, which has seized attention in the United States, its military has in recent years deployed forces to Syria, seized Crimea and intervened in eastern Ukraine, rattled the Baltic States with snap exercises and buzzed Nato planes and ships.
Punishing sanctions by the United States and European allies that have isolated Russia further have done nothing to stop Putin's saber-rattling, as illustrated by the long-scheduled Zapad exercise.
Even more worrying, top US military officers say, is that the maneuvers could be used as a pretext to increase Russia's military presence in Belarus, a central European nation that borders three critical Nato allies: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
"The great concern is they're not going to leave, and that's not paranoia," General Tony Thomas, the head of the US Special Operations Command, told a national security conference in Aspen, Colorado, in July. Peter Zwack, a retired one-star Army general who was the US defense attache in Moscow from 2012 to 2014, said: "First and foremost, the messaging is, 'We're
watching you; we're strong; we've learned a lot; don't mess with Russia'."
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