Since the start of the Russo – Ukraine war, the world has been thrown into geopolitical turmoil. Countries are currently engaged in an arms race with countries like Russia and China whose sole agenda is territorial domination through military activities. In between this turmoil, Russia has invited India, China and 11 other countries to the Vostok games.
Russia is hosting its major multi-national military exercise Vostok – 2022, as a counter-attack to the United States’ attempt to isolate Russia from the rest of the world.
Reportedly, Russia has invited India, China and 11 other countries including Syria, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos and Nicaragua are participating in this large-scale military drill.
Almost 50,000 multi-national troops, 140 aircraft and 60 naval assets participate in the military exercise.
Russia has reported being able to produce 15,000 troops for participation since they are currently engaged in the Russo-Ukraine War as the experts suggest that 80% of the Russian military on the Eastern Front are presently engaged in War.
India has denied participating in the Naval component of the military exercise. Earlier this week, Japan had made it’s concerned about the proximity of the naval military drill to their mainland to Russia.
The Naval exercise is supposed to happen in the Kuril Islands which are owned by Russian State, and are too close to the Japanese mainland of Hokkaido.
But Russia has brushed away the concerns and went ahead with the military drill. India is an integral part of the Quad alliance with Japan – an alliance that was created to battle against Chinese hegemonic aggression.
Therefore in order to safeguard Indian interests, no naval assets will be joining this component of the military exercise. Moreover, India is already being hit by flak fire from its western strategic allies since India has not condemned Russia and is continuing to import Russian oil, gas and coal.
The size of the Vostok games of 2022 has considerably reduced in size as compared to 2018. In 2018, Vostok war games over 300,000 personnel participated with 1000 military aircraft and 36,000 tanks.
Conrad Muzyka, director of Rochan military consultancy based in Poland said “This is going to be the smallest strategic-level exercise in years because the entire ground forces potential is engaged in operations in Ukraine. So the exercise will have to be very small”, he also said “ It’s just Russia pretending everything is fine and they still have the capability to launch a large-scale military exercise with China.
But in reality, I think the scope of this exercise, especially from a ground force perspective, is going to be very, very limited”.
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