Monday, November 2, 2009

Russia Wargames Polish Aggression?

This would be one for the "You're joking, right?" Department, except for the fact that at least two reports have it that Belarus-Russian exercises called Operation West were based on Poland as the aggressor, Belarus the victim of an "ethnic" uprising, and various means including nuclear missile strikes being required to win, as defined by the exercise set.

This wasn't just a paper exercise, either, apparently:
The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.
If reports are right, the Polish government is steaming about this, and given how faithful an ally the rest of NATO is looking to be right now, having Russia practicing storming Polish beaches has got to be almost maddening.

One question, though: The best open source on matters like this, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, has *nothing* on this as of right now... the link is included to allow a look there later to see if anything breaks.

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A rather lengthy piece on the importance of Belarus to Eastern European security, its history, and the odd with-them-against-them alliance they have with Russia was posted last year, here at CompHyp.

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