.
By Alexei Anishchuk
President Vladimir Putin ordered the launch of large-scale military
exercises in the Black Sea on Thursday, projecting Russian power towards
Europe and the Middle East in a move that may vex its neighbors.
Officials suggested the surprise drills were designed to test the
reaction speed and combat readiness of Russian forces, but Putin’s order
also seemed aimed at sending a signal to the West that Russia is an
important presence in the region.
Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Putin
triggered the maneuvers as he flew back overnight from South Africa
after a summit of the BRICS emerging economies.
Peskov said 36 warships and an unspecified number of warplanes would
take part, but did not say how long the exercises would last.
Putin has stressed the importance of a strong and agile military
since returning to the presidency last May. In 13 years in power, he has
often cited external threats when talking of the need for reliable
armed forces and Russian political unity.
Late last month, Putin ordered military leaders to make urgent
improvements to the armed forces in the next few years, saying Russia
must thwart Western attempts to tip the balance of power. He said
maneuvers must be held with less advance warning, to keep soldiers on
their toes.
Putin, 60, has also used his role as commander-in-chief and calls for
military might to cast himself as a strong leader for whom the
country’s security is foremost. State media emphasized that he had given
the order for the exercises from an airplane in the dead of night.
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, whose main base is in the Ukrainian port of
Sevastopol, was instrumental in a war with ex-Soviet neighbor Georgia
in 2008 over the Russian-backed breakaway regions of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia.
In addition to Georgia and Ukraine, Russia shares the Black Sea with Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania.
But Russian foreign affairs analyst Fyodor Lukyanov said the
exercises were “more likely part of a wider attempt to reconfirm that
Russia’s navy and military forces in the south are still able to play a
political and geopolitical role.”
“It is flexing muscles and may have more to do with what is happening
in the Mediterranean, around Syria, than in the Black Sea,” said
Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global affairs.
REGIONAL ROLE
Russia’s modest naval maintenance and supply facility in Syria is its
only military base outside the former Soviet Union, and the Defence
Ministry recently announced plans to deploy a naval unit in the
Mediterranean on a permanent basis.
Russia has clashed diplomatically with the West throughout a two-year
conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people in Syria, using its
U.N. Security Council veto to block Western efforts to push President
Bashar al-Assad from power.
Moscow-based military analyst Alexander Golts said unannounced
exercises are a good thing for Russia’s military, but that the location
could raise questions among Russia’s neighbors about its intentions.
“We will be watching these exercises very closely as Georgia has its
own experience with Russia,” Tedo Japaridze, head of the Georgian
parliament’s foreign relations committee, told Reuters, referring to the
2008 war. However, he said all countries on the Black Sea have the
right to hold exercises.
The Kremlin portrays Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as a
bellicose leader, and Russia said last week that annual U.S.-Georgian
training exercises that began this month in Georgia put peace at risk.
Those exercises are being held far from Georgia’s Black Sea coast.
Meanwhile, disputes with Ukraine over Moscow’s continued lease of the
Black Sea navy base have been a thorn in relations with its former
Soviet neighbor.
Ukraine’s foreign minister was in Moscow on Thursday. He could not
immediately be reached for comment, and Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovich’s office declined to comment on the Russian exercises, as did
the Defence Ministry.
(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow and Pavel
Polityuk in Kiev; Writing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Steve Gutterman;
Editing by Douglas Busvine and Toby Chopra)
http://news.yahoo.com/putin-flexes-russias-military-muscle-black-sea-exercises-150222901.html