(EDM) Russia’s annual major autumnal exercises are usually accompanied by a loud propaganda campaign advertising the country’s military might; this year, however, official reporting on the Tsentr 2019 war games was rather low key. On Friday (September 20), President Vladimir Putin, in his capacity as commander-in-chief, observed the tanks advancing through the staged explosions to conquer an imaginary “terrorist state” in the Orenburg steppes for less than an hour and declared himself satisfied (Rossyiskaya Gazeta, September 20). The official (and highly inflated) total number of involved troops is 128,000, which is about three times lower than that for the Vostok 2018 exercises last year; moreover, no significant redeployment of mobile units was performed this year, even though some elements of the mobilization system were tested (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, August 13). Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu distributed the usual awards, perhaps with a sigh of relief about avoiding mid-air collisions and crash-landings, which have repeatedly bedeviled the Russian Aerospace Forces since January (Svobodnaya Pressa, September 11; Novaya Gazeta, January 23). […]
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