05.09.2003, 23:07
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Zitat:What Role for the Armed Forces?
By Alexander Golts
If anyone doubted that change is afoot in Russian military policy, the major training exercises that concluded in the Far East last week, dubbed Vostok 2003, provided some convincing evidence. The Defense Ministry brass emphasized the unprecedented scale of the exercises: more than 70,000 soldiers along with dozens of warships and aircraft. But to my mind, the real change was geographical. For the second year running, Russia conducted training exercises in an area where it faces a real threat to its national security.
In 2002, Russia held training exercises in the Caspian Sea after negotiations on dividing up the resource-rich sea floor broke down. The exercises sent a clear signal to all of the Caspian nations that Russia was prepared to defend its stake in the region's rich oil fields. This year's massive exercises in the Far East got under way on the eve of a six-nation summit devoted to the North Korean nuclear threat. So long as Kim Jong Il carries on blackmailing the entire world community, the possibility of armed conflict in this densely populated region cannot be ruled out.
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