"What Happened During Vostok 2018?" Topic

"After the week-long Vostok 2018 large-scale Russian strategic maneuvers ended on September 17 and the initial hot takes went to press, the Russian blog Naspravdi rebutted Western observations, declaring, "[I]f we consider that America, from time immemorial has only understood the language of power, I believe the unprecedented military exercises conducted by Russia jointly with China and Mongolia in the homeland of the great conqueror of Eurasia Genghis Khan greatly improved the thinking process of our strategic opponents" (Naspravdi.info, September 24). In reality, Vostok 2018 shed more light on Russian thinking on the future of war than it will likely educate Western militaries.

Officially, the exercise involved 297,000 Russian service members, about 36,000 pieces of equipment, and more than 1,000 aircraft (YouTube, September 6), complemented by 3,200 Chinese soldiers and an unknown number of Mongolians. This represents a third of all active-duty servicemen and 72 percent of all combat-capable aircraft of the Russian Federation, according to IISS's 2018 Military Balance. As such, it is an utterly impossible scale (see EDM, September 17, 19), especially considering the logistical limitations of reinforcing the Russian Eastern Military District (VVO), where the exercise occurred (Openrailwaymap.org, accessed October 1)…."
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Amicalement
Armand

The Chinese got real-world intel on how the Russians will reinforce their Eastern border, should war break out there.

Pretty much. Though it is about as far from Moscow to Mongolia as it is from Moscow to Poland, so the Russians got a lesson in deploying mass troops a long way.

The Russians gave the Chinese a good look at how invading its eastern region would be a really bad idea.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

There's a dood documentary on Netflix that talks about how China is basically taking over Siberia demographically. There are so few Russians there that they cannot exploit the resources, and have been allowing Chinese firms to basically come in and take over as long as the central government gets their cut. So now you have a border region with lots of Chinese already living and working in Russia and outnumbering the locals with many more Chinese just over the border reaping in profits.

It's in Russia's best interest to keep China happy since if a war started, it would not look so good for the Russians, who will have much longer supply lines and less population there to resist. China is basically in a position to say, ‘Be friendly or else.' It is not 1900, and China is far from the broken expoitable mess it was then. Russia is now in retreat in the East, with most young Russians moving West towards Moscow to find jobs.