Caucasus-2012 not intended to threaten any country

Alexander Postnikov, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Colonel-General

The year 2012 is full of practical training activities of the troops. The thematic focus of these activities is a logical continuation of the work being carried out in the armed forces in order to increase combat readiness, combat capabilities, and the degree of training of the troops in the new conditions of the new organizational structure. It is this method that allows us to realistically assess the directions of the reforms in our armed forces, quickly respond to what went wrong, make adjustments to these plans, and ultimately achieve what we would like to achieve in terms of training. And first of all, we pay priority attention to the preparation of multi-service troops and forces and to the ability of the commanders to manage these groups at various levels. This is a rather difficult task, and only during the exercises can we achieve positive results.

The most important and significant event in 2012 for us is, of course, the strategic command and staff exercise "Caucasus-2012". I would just mention that the focus of these exercises is not in any way intended to threaten any country or military-political bloc. This event is planned; it is similar to those already held in other Russian regions. I want to remind you of the strategic exercises "West 2009", "East 2010", "Center-2011." Therefore, in the Southern Military District, in this exercise, "Caucasus-2012", we have the intention of checking the level of training of managers and troops to carry out their tasks of ensuring military security in the south-western region of the country. And I would note that, excluding the tension in our relations with some neighbors, amongst the training units there are no representatives of the military bases in Armenia, South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Among the participants there are no representatives of other states. And command and staff exercises are carried out only on the territory of the Russian Federation.

I would also note that, in conjunction with the governing bodies and the armed forces of the Southern District, operational groups from the Ministry of the Interior, Federal Security Service and Ministry of Emergency Situations, that is, those structures that interact with the armed forces during the execution of tasks of ensuring safety, will be involved in the exercise. In addition, I would like to point out that the exercises cannot be described as large-scale. First of all, these exercises involve the government and a small number of troops, forces, which are necessary to check whether the decisions taken by commanders are legitimate and logical, and how they will be implemented under the conditions that the exercises determine. If we talk about the number of participants, it is quite small: the personnel - up to 8000 people, military weapons and equipment - about 200 units, 100 units of artillery shells of various types, while the grouping of the navy is also small - up to 10 ships and boats, and the Air Force during the exercise will make around 80 sorties. As you can see, the group is small, because the goals of the leadership of the armed forces and of the participants of the exercises are somewhat different: they are to test the effectiveness of the multi-level system of control over troops and weapons, to check if our commanders are able to fully and effectively use this system and to respond to changes in the situation adequately, based on the opportunities available to them. The use of multi-service groupings, which include both land and naval and air components, just allow us to test the readiness of the governing bodies to carry out such tasks.

This year, in preparing the troops, we paid a lot of attention to the organization of joint training with the armed forces of the State Parties to the Treaty on Collective Security. This is primarily due to the fact that we understand that we need inter-operability, because we have common purposes, and we will resolve them together to defend our common and collective interests. In general, we are preparing the administration and training the troops for the exercises of the Collective Rapid Reaction Forces of CSTO; this September, the exercises "Interaction 2012" will be held in Armenia. And I would like to emphasize that, according to the purposes of the exercises and to the tasks performed by the troops, this exercise has no relation to the strategic and command post exercise "Caucasus-2012". The main thrust of these exercises is to train officers to manage groups of troops in the performance of anti-terrorism tasks, subject to compliance with international human rights and our responsibilities. Most importantly, our goal is to achieve an understanding of how these tasks will be performed, including in the event that any conflicts arise requiring to prevent them and to ultimately carry out a whole range of post-conflict activities. It should be noted that for the first time representatives of the Committee of the International Red Cross will be involved in these exercises, and above all they will work out issues related to humanitarian assistance in areas where, according to the plan of exercise, a conflict situation will appear. This also means a lot to us, and we want this interaction to be indeed specific and very tight.

In June, as part of our interaction with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the exercises "Peace Mission 2012" were held. It's an anti-terrorism exercise; it is not the first time they are being held. And with every step of the exercises of this kind, we note the increase of the coherence of international, collective groups, better interaction and more competent management of such joint actions. The exercises, the title of which - "Slavic Commonwealth-2012" - was fairly typical, were held and involved units from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. I want to tell you that the benefits of such exercises are quite large. The effectiveness of these joint troops in the course of such exercises has demonstrated them.

In addition, this year the operational and tactical command and staff exercise "Aldaspan-2012" has already been held and has been attended by Russian and Kazakh units of the armed forces. Finally, in September or October we have to participate in a joint military exercise in Mongolia; these exercises, "Selenga", have already become a tradition in which the issues of international use of the armed forces and, most importantly, the issues related to logistics of these joint military forces are considered. Both during the exercise "Kavkaz-2012" and in these joint activities, it is not the whole list of the activities of practical training of the troops which have been held and will be held this year, of course, we consider it a priority to study our ability to use automated systems of control over troops and weapons. This direction will eventually let us fully consider each unit of the armed forces to be modern and meeting the requirements that are presented to them, and most importantly - able to ensure the military security of our country, which is actually our purpose.