© RIA Novosti
On September 1 to 7, seven ranges of Russia’s Eastern Military District will host the Vostok 2022 strategic command and staff exercises to bring together over 50 thousand people, some 5 thousand units of weaponry and equipment, including 140 aircraft, 60 warships, boats and support vessels. The exercises will be led by Chief of Russia’s General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
"The Vostok 2022 strategic command and staff exercise envisages various scenarios of operations by combined arms and coalition forces (troops) to ensure military security of the Russian Federation and its allies within the area of responsibility of the Eastern Military District," the Russian Defense Ministry said. On the part of Russia the maneuvers engage bodies of military administration command and Eastern Military District forces, part of the airborne troops, long-range and military transport aircraft.
The current drills are meant practice defensive and offensive operations at Primorye’s Sergeyevsky training ground. In the Sea of Japan, forces of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the Chinese Navy will work out joint actions to defend naval communications and areas of maritime economic activity, support for land forces along the Primorsky direction. Among the locations there are also the Burduny, Goryachiye Klyuchi, Knyaze-Volkonsky, Lagunnoye, Sergeyevsky, Telemba and Uspenovsky ranges and Okhotsk Sea coastal zones.
The scale of upcoming exercises is not only indicated by the number of military personnel and equipment involved, but also by the entry list of attending countries. Apart from Russia, personnel from Belarus (250 people), India, China and Mongolia will take part. Member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) pledge to send their observers. There will be delegations from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Laos, Nicaragua, Syria and other countries. These exercises are proof that Russia is by no means isolated internationally, despite all the Western claims.
Thousands of foreign troops have already arrived at the training sites. All their actions will comply with the Agreement between Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and China on Confidence Building in the Military Field in the Border Area.
Notably, this year’s Vostok 2022 exercises are being held amid a complex APR situation over the Taiwan crisis. In particular, the United States is whipping up tension in the region. Small wonder that Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev recently called the deployment of US missile defense systems in the APR particularly dangerous and obscuring their offensive potential.
"US moves stationing anti-ballistic missile systems in the region represent a particular danger to strategic stability. By using these supposedly defensive weapons, the Americans are camouflaging the deployment of offensive potential in the region," he said during video consultations with his ASEAN colleagues on August 22.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov branded Washington's deployment of American missile defense systems in the Asia-Pacific region a global US project to contain Russia and China and ensure its own absolute dominance in this region.
Thus, the Vostok 2022 drills serve a sort of response to the US and its allies for their hostility acts in the Asia-Pacific, which Washington and its ilk seem to be perfectly aware of. Japan and France got concerned and responded to the exercises, but the highest concerns were expressed by the United States proper. Washington is particularly discouraged by the engagement of India and China. No prize for guessing that the Americans invest heavily into pitting New Delhi and Beijing against each other and preventing a Russian-Chinese rapprochement. And along comes such a "surprise": Russian, Indian and Chinese servicemen are going to conduct joint exercises! The United States is simply uncapable of such a thing – hence its indignation and kind of confusion.
Let’s emphasize that Washington seems shocked by this course of events. While the engagement of Chinese servicemen is no surprise here, given the close relationship between Moscow and Beijing, the presence of Indian servicemen has become a shock and evidence of an utter failure the US own ties with India. The United States make little secret of its expectations regarding that country, especially after the President Joe Biden’s visit to New Delhi in May this year. However, it became obvious after a while that India, which is by the way part of the QUAD along with the USA, Australia and Japan, won’t pander to Washington and will stay aloof. This caused a real hysteria in America.
Moreover, despite all the US efforts to tear India away from Russia, relations between New Delhi and Moscow are only getting stronger and more extensive. India's behavior has been puzzling, if not irritating to the West recently. The single reason is that instead of supporting Western sanctions against Russia, India strengthens and expands cooperation with it. Two Western broadsheets have recently brought this into view – America’s The Washington Examiner (WE) and Germany’s Der Spiegel.
The former particularly wonders why India, being the US strategic partner and "the world’s largest democracy" (as branded in the West) is holding on to its friendship with Russia so bad. After all, the country’s economy and people have not proven immune to Ukraine military conflict’s indirect consequences. But the Americans cannot apparently understand the time-honored bosom friendship between Moscow and New Delhi, just because they have no idea of how to make friends with anyone, since Washington prefers dictate over respect or equality. It is these qualities that distinguish the long-term friendly relations between Moscow and New Delhi, hence the nature of their present-day "special and privileged strategic partnership".
The presence of Indian military personnel at the Vostok 2022 maneuvers is a clear proof of the increasingly strong across-the-board relations between Moscow and New Delhi, including the military sphere.
