the development of russian military policy and finland

ANNEX 4
EXPERIENCES AND CONCLUSIONS OF THE RUSSIAN
MILITARY EXERCISES SINCE 2009
Large-scale strategic military exercises of Russian Armed Forces and together
with forces of other "power ministries", so called “siloviki”, have been carried
out in different parts of Russia on rotation basis every 1-4 years. After one
such exercise, Kavkaz-2008, in August 2008 troops continued directly to the
pre-planned military operation against Georgia, instead of returning to their
home bases in the Northern Caucasus Military District. 332 The next large-scale
strategic military exercise Zapad-2013 (West-2013) will take place in western
Russia and Belarus in 2013. 333
Large-scale strategic exercises in North-West Russia have not been frequent.
The year 2009 made an exception. Two large-scale partly overlapping exercises
were carried out. Exercise Ladoga-2009 was carried out in a zone of 300
km x 1200 km, from Pechenga to Vyborg and further south of St. Petersburg.
A few weeks later started another, even larger exercise, Zapad (West) 2009
which tested the new chain of command.
Both exercises started from the same basic scenario, invasion by enemy
ground forces from the west toward western and north-western Russia, supported
by air and naval forces. Exercise Ladoga took place mainly in nine
separate ranges between The Arctic Ocean and Pskov oblast. The live firing
climax was a launch of ballistic missiles. Both exercises were coordinated by
the General Staff. Ladoga-2009 was executed under the command of Commander-in-Chief
of Russian Ground Forces and Zapad-2009 under Chief of
General Staff. 334
One important goal of both exercises was to scrutinize the protection of
flanks of two commands. New tactical and technical innovations with "good
332 Cohen, 2008. See also the video Студия "Альфа", г. Тверь, 7 August 2012,
Потерянный день" вся правда о Войне 08.08.08г. (The Lost Day – the Whole Truth
about the War on 8 August 2008) & Felgenhauer, 2012. The “Lost Day” film and the
comments by Putin and Medvedev have revealed a great deal: that the invasion of Georgia
in August 2008 was indeed a pre-planned aggression and that so-called “Russian peacekeepers”
in South Ossetia and Abkhazia were in fact the vanguard of the invading forces
that were in blatant violation of Russia’s international obligations and were training and
arming the local separatist forces.
333 Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BELTA), 26 October 2012, “Belarus to Host Next
Belarusian-Russian Army Exercise in 2013” [http://news.belta.by/en/news/society?id=
664528].
334 Khaimendrinov, 2009.