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Russia Planning Its Most Colossal War Games In Nearly 40 Years

REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko

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Evie Fordham Politics and Health Care Reporter
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Russia is planning its most colossal war exercise in nearly 40 years for Sept. 11 to 15, Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday.

The exercise, Vostok-2018, will use nearly 300,000 troops, more than 1,000 aircraft and 36,000 armored vehicles, reported Reuters. The war games will take place in central and eastern Russia and also involve Chinese and Mongolian armed forces.

“Imagine 36,000 armored vehicles — tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored infantry vehicles — moving and working simultaneously, and that all this, naturally, is being tested in conditions as close as possible to military ones,” Shoigu said Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Russia briefed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on the exercise in May and invited some officials from NATO countries to Russia for the war games, NATO spokesperson Dylan White said, according to Reuters.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be in Russia for a separate forum while the exercise occurs. Japan will keep an eye on Russia and China’s military collaboration, a Japanese foreign ministry official said Tuesday, Reuters reported. (RELATED: Seventy-One Percent Of Russians Say Their Government Never Tried To Meddle In U.S. Elections)

The war games will be the largest Russia has conducted since a Soviet-era exercise in 1981. Russia and Belarus carried out a smaller war simulation in 2017, reported BBC.

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