Vantage Point North

Russian T-72B3 obr 2016 tanks near Ukraine For well over a decade, Russia has been actively building a capability to turn large training exercises into offensive military operations to minimize the suspicions of the buildup. This strategy was successfully employed in 2014 when Russian army occupied Crimea from Ukraine. The same type of maskirovka , or deception, was also used multiple times by the USSR. During the massive Zapad 2017 exercise many western experts and pundits, myself included, were very worried that Russia would use it as a cover to stage an attack against Ukraine or even the Baltic states. Before Zapad 2017 I wrote a short checklist titled "To worry or not": Tweet from 2017 The list isn't comprehensive, but the Russian buildup during the January 2022 ticks all other boxes from that list, with the exception of Air Force assets being deployed to road bases, but that isn't strictly necessary given the availability of runways in the regions surrounding Ukr...

For the last three centuries the Naval Infantry was the sole force in Russia trained to conduct forced landings to seashores. In 2017 the Russian military reforms reached a point that more amphibious landing capable forces were needed. In a surprising moment of military insight, they begun training the VDV airborne forces to conduct amphibious landings on their own. BTR-82A making a landfall The 2017 test runs were followed up with joint exercises between the Naval Infantry and the VDV. The VDV brings some unique capabilities to the table, as it’s a service that is specialized in expeditionary operations. The combined air and naval landings also allow the Russian armed forces to move in significantly more men and machines that either of the branches could ferry on their own. In the beginning of the February 2019 the Russian marines based in the occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea conducted a routine landing drill to an unprepared beachhead. The Russian armed forces TV...