Until this weeks
kaleidoscopic scramble across Russia’s the western frontier, the
Russian armed forces have been following a largely routine schedule
since the rolling readiness checks of the October 2017 and the massive Zapad17 exercise.
The recent flurry of
activity started with the snap drills of the reconnaissance, artillery
and combat engineering units, that are commonly associated with the
spearhead formations of the Russian army. Alone these drills are not
very remarkable and even when grouped like this, they shouldn’t
cause a major alarm with the Western defense planners.
When the entire
Strategic Rocket Force (RVSN), ie. the Russia’s ground based ICBM
force was alerted and the mobile TEL:s rolled into the vast forests
things started to look slightly suspicious. Especially when the
readiness check of the nuclear forces coincided with the expulsion of
the Russian diplomats by UK, EU and USA.
Simultaneously with
the RVSN, the majority of the Russian air defense and anti-ship
missile units along the western border from the Arctic to the Black
Sea were alerted and sent out to missile drills.
The real surprises
came on 29.3.2018, when Russia announced that it would conduct naval
missile exercises in the western Baltic Sea. The target areas are
closer to the Swedish territorial waters than ever before. There is
also a secondary target area close to the Polish waters. Second Naval
missile drill by a task force led by the Slava-class cruiser Marshall
Ustinov is underway in the Barents sea north of Norway. This is a
classic move in any Russian operation that is aimed against NATO or
Sweden.
This provocative act
is backed with a major annual air force exercise Ladoga 18, that is
for the first time conducted with strike packages taking off without
pre-designated targets. The pilots will only receive the targets for the
live missiles while airborne. This kind of a drill could easily be used as a cover
for a strategic strike against a nearby country. There is also an amphibious drill of the Baltic Fleet marines going on in the Kaliningrad as well as some peculiar VDV airborne drills.
Without the
activation of the heavy hitters of the Russian ground forces, such as
the 1st guards tank army, this isn’t going to be another
invasion. Instead it is a very asymmetric response to the western
diplomatic actions that were directed against Russia after the
chemical weapons attack against the UK.
Russia is signaling
loudly that it will not play with the same rules as the western
nations. It isn’t even playing the same game.
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