Russia kicks off Zapad-2017 war games against imagined enemy that isn’t Nato

Nato officials say the drills are intended to show Russia’s ability to mass large numbers of troops at very short notice in the event of a conflict

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Belarusian army vehicles prepare for the war games. Photo: AP

Published: 5:53pm, 14 Sep 2017Updated: 5:54pm, 14 Sep 2017

The last time Vladimir Putin sent thousands of troops into Belarus to defend against an imaginary invasion from the west, a real war erupted on Russia’s periphery within months – in Ukraine in 2014.

So the latest iteration of the week-long Zapad, or West, bilateral war game, which kicked off Thursday, has alarmed officials across Europe, particularly now that Russia is in the middle of a historic arms build-up and its relations with the US-led Nato military alliance are the tensest since the height of the cold war.

Even before Russian soldiers started roaming Belarus, a former Soviet republic that borders three Natoand European Union states plus Ukraine, western leaders accused Putin of deceit.

While Russia and Belarus say only 12,700 troops are involved – a level just shy of triggering compulsory international monitoring – Germany and Poland put the real total at more than 100,000. That estimate includes joint exercises in Kaliningrad, Russia’s nuclear-armed enclave on the Baltic Sea that’s nestled between Poland and Lithuania.

A Russian military jet in Belarus. Photo: AP

“We see a very, very large-scale offensive exercise that shows hatred against the West,” Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said in remarks published Wednesday.

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