Russia practices war in the west

The last ten days of September have seen the final phase of the Zapad-2009 and Ladoga-2009 military exercises of the Russian Armed Forces in cooperation with the Belarusian army. The two drills were the largest exercises to be held on the western borders of Russia and Belarus since the end of the Cold War. The field exercices taking place in Russia and Belarus' border districts from Murmansk to Brest, in the Kaliningrad oblast and on the Baltic Sea featured a total of at least 30,000 soldiers and navy servicemen. From the military perspective, the exercises were a test of the Russian army's new organisational structure and its ability to move troops between potential military theatres. In the political dimension, they should be viewed as a demonstration of force towards Russia's western neighbours and an assertion of the significant role that the military factor will play in the Russian Federation's long-term policy, irrespective of the country's economic situation.

The military aspect

The Zapad-2009 and Ladoga-2009 operational-strategic exercises, although they were formally independent of each other, were part of a single drill cycle, and should be treated as a whole because they overlapped in several areas, they involved the same structures of command, and their culmination took place within the same period.
The Zapad-2009 exercise, which was organised together with the Belarusian army, referred back to the analogous drill organised in 1999, although the scale of this operation was much larger. The Zapad-99 exercise, which was the only drill on an operational-strategic scale to be organised at that time, involved a total of around 7,000 army and navy troops in all the military districts and fleets of the European part of Russia. This year, a similar number of Russian troops exercised on Belarusian territory alone. The whole exercise involved a total of 15,000 Russian soldiers and navy servicemen (and a further 6,500 Belarusian troops), equipped with 1,000 pieces of heavy military equipment (tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and artillery), at least one hundred combat planes and helicopters, and twenty battleships. Similar numbers of troops and weapons were involved in the Ladoga-2009 exercise organised by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on their own.
The two exercises demonstrated that the structural and organisational changes in the Russian army, announced back in late 2008, are being implemented as planned. Most of the units taking part in the exercises were newly-formed brigades (at least six such brigades took part in the drills). Also notable was the Russian Armed Forces' improving ability to move troops quickly. The firing-range phase of the Ladoga-2009 field exercise, which took place in the Leningrad Military District, involved a brigade from the Volga-Urals Military District; also, as part of the Zapad-2009 field exercise, units from the Moscow Military District were moved to Belarus and the Kaliningrad Oblast. The drills on the Baltic Sea involved battleships from the Northern and Black Sea Fleets, as a result of which it was possible to stage the largest maritime landing exercise since 1981.

The political aspect

By organising the (previously announced) Zapad-2009 and Ladoga-2009 exercises, Russia chose to stage the largest- demonstration of force to date towards its closest western neighbours and also, indirectly to the North Atlantic Alliance and the European Union. The active phase of the Zapad-2009 exercise took place on the seventieth anniversary of the Red Army's operation against Poland in September 1939. The firing-range operations were held mainly in the borderland military areas in the area of Brest (which was also where the presidents of Russia and Belarus met at the end of the exercise on 29 September) and Hrodna, as well as at mouth of the Gdańsk Bay. The Ladoga-2009 drill, on the other hand, brought to mind temporal and geographic analogies to the Red Army's preparations to enter the three Baltic States and attack Finland. The hypothetical frontline in the exercise spanned the entire border between Russia and these states. This was probably the first time that a military demonstration of this kind addressing Finland has been staged in several decades.
The preparations for the Zapad-2009 exercise have also exposed the true scale of Belarus' dependence on Russia. The preparations on the Belarusian side were affected neither by this summer's disagreements between Russia and Belarus concerning mutual economic relations (such as the so-called 'milk war'), nor by the practice Minsk had developed, in response to economic pressure from Moscow, of periodically refusing to engage in closer co-operation within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation.

The economic aspect

The Zapad-2009 and Ladoga-2009 drills, together with Moscow's plans announced on the occasion of the exercises to continue re-arming the Russian forces and improving the economic standing of military personnel, were tangible proof that the importance of the military factor in Russia's policy is rising systematically, as has been observed since the beginning of this decade. The changes taking place in the Russian Armed Forces, including the professionalisation of the first-line units, technical modernisation, and modifications in the chain of command (including a shift towards a brigade system), have accelerated considerably since the war in Georgia in August 2008. In spite of the economic crisis and the consequent substantial decrease in the Russian budget's revenue, military spending has not been cut. Moreover, even if the depreciation of the rouble and the 'black scenario' of yearly inflation at 16% are taken into account, military spending is still higher in real terms than it was last year. In the 2008 federal budget, 959.6 billion roubles were allocated under the 'national defence' heading; in 2009 the amount was 1196.7 billion roubles, even after the crisis-related limitations. In both cases, military spending was increased during the year; an additional amount of more than 50 billion roubles was allocated for military purposes in September 2009 alone. As the structural and organisational changes in the army have been progressing faster than originally planned, the funds earmarked for military purposes are increasingly being spent on investments. Despite the crisis, production in the armaments industry has been rising systematically since the beginning of 2009 (5.3% over the eight months of 2009); this fact is particularly telling, especially against the background of falling production in the electric machine building industry in general (by 34%).
Irrespective of the declared peaceful objectives of its foreign policy and despite the economic crisis, Russia is developing its army and keeping it on high alert, as evidenced by the recent drills, treating it as an instrument of its current policy towards the neighbouring countries. The Russian authorities are aiming to reach a level at which this instrument may be used equally effectively to demonstrate force and to run a classic armed operation.

Andrzej Wilk

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