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Europe in 2015
War games By the end of the operation, the Baltics have been captured 11
and a land bridge to Kaliningrad secured. The “Caucasus
Military incursions into EU and NATO countries are not 2009” manoeuvres repeated similar patterns against
far from the minds of Russian military planners. In the Georgia, and the “Lagoda 2009” drills practised amphibious
first major exercise to test the “new look” reforms, “Zapad and airborne operations in the Baltics and Finland.40 All of
2009”, the Russian army practised a swift offensive against the exercises involved the quick mobilisation of Russian
Poland and the Baltic states, launching nuclear strikes transport to the theatre and the earliest possible “resuming”
against Poland to deter NATO from further engagement.39 of offensive operations (as a diplomatic fig leaf, each
scenario involved countering an initial NATO/Georgian
39 At the time, there was little Western coverage of the manoeuvre. A short description attack). In the “Zapad 2013” manoeuvre, the script was
of it can be found at Anna Dunin, “Intel Brief: Poland On Edge Over Russian Drills”, even more loaded with significance. “Illegal armed groups”
ISN, 18 November 2009, available at http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/ or “terrorists” from the Baltic states would take control of
Detail/?id=109702&Ing=en (hereafter, Dunin, “Poland On Edge Over Russian Drills”);
and Roger McDermott, “Zapad 2009 Rehearses Countering a NATO Attack on Belarus”, 40 “Russia holds large-scale Ladoga-2009 military drills”, RIA Novosti, 18 August 2009,
Eurasia Daily Monitor, Volume 6, Issue 179, the Jamestown Foundation, 30 September available at http://sputniknews.com/military/20090818/155844811.html.
2009, available at http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35558#.
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