{"id":1132,"date":"2018-09-14T07:04:24","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T07:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=1132"},"modified":"2018-09-14T07:04:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T07:04:24","slug":"russias-massive-war-games-in-the-heart-of-siberia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=1132","title":{"rendered":"Russia&#8217;s massive war games in the heart of Siberia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Moscow, <\/strong>Russia&#8217;s armed forces began the second day of its massive military exercises in the country&#8217;s far east on Wednesday with a show of strength involving anti-aircraft and missile maneuvers.<\/p>\n<p>The Vostok-2018 war games, the largest staged by Russia since the Cold War, were partly held at the Soviet-built training ground in Telemba, some 200 km to the east of Lake Baikal in the heart of Siberia.<br \/>\nAs heavy rain fell, the overcast Siberian sky filled with missiles, guided rockets and thunderous explosions in a show of strength that observers in the West will be watching eagerly.<\/p>\n<p>Colonel Alexander Agafanov of the Russia Air Force described the exercises as a success.<\/p>\n<p>The military arranged several artillery batteries stocked with mid to long-range S-300, S-400, Tor and Buk missiles, the likes of which Moscow has recently sold to Syria and Iran despite protests from the US and Israel.<\/p>\n<p>More than a thousand soldiers took part in a hyper-realistic recreation of a theater of war and explosions interrupted the normally tranquil region, one of the few in Russia where the population is predominantly Buddhist.<\/p>\n<p>Although the war games serve Moscow&#8217;s propaganda machine, officials declined to name the imagined enemy of the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian forces taking part in Vostok-2018.<\/p>\n<p>Nor would they enlighten reporters as to why there was no sign of the more than 3,000 Chinese soldiers sent to the maneuvers by Beijing.<\/p>\n<p>The participation of the People&#8217;s Liberation Army surprised many experts.<\/p>\n<p>The display of strength from Russia comes at a time when relations between Moscow and the West are at a considerable low.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Russian defense ministry, 300,000 troops, more than 1,000 aircraft and some 36,000 tanks and vehicles are involved in the maneuvers.<\/p>\n<p>The Kremlin said the war games were routine and did not pose a threat to other countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moscow, Russia&#8217;s armed forces began the second day of its massive military exercises in the country&#8217;s far east on Wednesday with a show of strength involving anti-aircraft and missile maneuvers. The Vostok-2018 war games, the largest staged by Russia since the Cold War, were partly held at the Soviet-built training ground in Telemba, some 200 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-international"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1134,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions\/1134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}