Interesting rundown of Zapad 2017 by Anna Maria Dyner from the Polish Institute of International Affairs. It is interesting that Russia and Belarus use fictional adversaries but real geography for their own side. This seems like a good approach compared to the rather artificial scenarios you sometimes see at NATO exercises where participants end up […]
Russia
U.S. Army unprepared to deal with Russia in Europe
Great article by Wesley Morgan for Politico.com. All countries should make regular and honest analyses of their operational abilities like the one by the 173rd Airborne Brigade, but unfortunately this kind of candor is rare. Too many decision makers get amazed by the technologically impressive possibilities of new equipment, and under the constraints of tight […]
Should have left them in the garage
Robert Beckhusen for War Is Boring in a piece titled “Military Exercises Are Tearng Up Russia’s Infrastructure“: In recent days, 574 vehicles of the crack 74th Guards Air Assault Division set off at night from its base at Pskov near the Estonian border for a training site at Strugi Krasnye some 40 miles to the […]
Russia denies access for observers to Zapad 2017
Ben Hodges, the U.S. Army’s commander in Europe, accuses Russia of fiddling with the numbers in order to keep foreign observers away from the upcoming exercise Zapad 2017, according to The Baltic Times: “The Russians had not given us a lot of reason to trust the numbers that they say. But again, the exercise hasn’t […]
