Vladimir Putin, in camouflage clothing, watches the Vostok-2022 military rehearsals. /
The president attends the exercises in the Russian Far East and this Wednesday he will be at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok
Vladimir Putin has taken a break from the bad news that reaches him from the battlefield in Ukraine and has gone thousands of kilometers to the Russian Far East to witness the Vostok-2022 (East.2022) military exercises, in which In addition to Russia, forces from China, India, Belarus, Syria and other countries participate. The Russian military television channel Zvezdá has shown images of Putin in the company of his Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, smiling, dressed in camouflage jackets and observing the exercises from the command post at the Sergeyevsky training camp. Next to them, more seriously, the head of the High General Staff of the Army, Valeri Gerasimov, appears engrossed in his notes.
As explained by the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, the military deployment of the maneuvers began on September 1 and extends through seven firing ranges in the extreme east of Russia and on the shores of the seas of Japan and Okhotsk. The operation, in which more than 50,000 troops, some 5,000 armored units, 140 planes and 60 ships have been involved, will be closed this Wednesday.
One of the peculiarities of these maneuvers is that countries that maintain complicated relations with each other participate. Such is the case of India and China, which have unresolved border disputes, or Russia and Kazakhstan, which are going through a difficult moment in their relations after the Kazakh president, Kasim Zhomart Tokáev, described the separatist republics as “quasi-state territories”. Ukrainian forces from Donetsk and Lugansk, supported militarily by Moscow since 2014. There are also forces in these maneuvers from Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have not yet recomposed their relations after the war that pitted them against each other in the fall of 2020 for control of the Nagorno enclave Karabakh.
However, these exercises have not been the greatest. The previous Vostok exercises, held in September 2018, saw the participation of nearly 300,000 soldiers, 36,000 tanks, more than 1,000 planes and 80 warships. They were the most important since 1981 and NATO then underlined that they constituted “the preparation of Russian troops for a large-scale conflict.”
In the midst of the Cold War, in 1981, the Soviet Union carried out unprecedented military maneuvers in order to intimidate the newcomer to the White House, Ronald Reagan, and issue a serious warning to NATO. More than 40 years later, Putin is barely trying to bring Ukraine into line. One of the reasons why Russia has deployed fewer troops today than in 2018 is that it needs them in the neighboring country and is having enormous difficulties recruiting the necessary number of soldiers.
The US administration has expressed concern about the presence of India in joint military exercises with Russia, Reuters reported, citing the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, who considered it “worrying for Washington that, while Moscow continues to wage war against Ukraine, there are countries that participate in Russian maneuvers. The truth is that, except for Belarus, none of the States involved in the Vostok-2022 exercises has sent forces or war material to fight Ukraine. Not even Syria.
Close ties with Beijing
Putin’s visit to the Russian Far East will continue on Wednesday in the port city of Vladivostok to take part in the Eastern Economic Forum, to which some 5,000 people have been invited. This conclave opened its doors on Monday and in its plenary session, in addition to the Russian president, will be the head of the Chinese Legislature, Li Zhanshu, number three in the hierarchy of the State of his country. Li is the highest-ranking Chinese Communist Party official to travel to Russia since the start of the military intervention in Ukraine on February 24.
Beijing has avoided condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is against sanctions against Moscow and deplores the sending of Western weapons to Ukrainian troops. Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met in Beijing in early February ahead of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
Russian energy giant Gazprom said in a statement on Tuesday that “a transition has been established to make payments for Russian gas deliveries to China in local currencies, the ruble and the yuan.” According to the note, “the new payment mechanism is a mutually advantageous, timely, reliable and practical solution”, underlines the company’s president, Alexei Miller, who believes that “an additional boost will be produced in the development of our economies”. Within the framework of the Vladivostok Forum, the head of the Kremlin is also scheduled to meet with the head of the Burmese military junta, Min Aug Hlaing.
themes
Ronald Wilson Reagan, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, White House, NATO, Communist Party (China), Belarus, China, India, Moscow, Beijing, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, Washington, War in Ukraine