Vladimir Putin has just authorised the world’s biggest game of cat and mouse after launching Russia’s largest naval drills in years across four bodies of water.
This week, Russia’s July Storm exercises began with simultaneous operations set to be carried out in the Arctic and Pacific Oceans as well as the Baltic and Caspian seas.
More than 15,000 personnel are believed to be taking part in the drills, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence, across 50 naval and auxiliary vessels, 120 aircraft, 10 coastal missile systems, and roughly 950 other military assets.
Russia’s Baltic, Northern, Pacific and Caspian Fleets are participating, overseen by Admiral Aleksandr Moiseyev, who was appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy last year.
The country’s naval prowess has long been questioned by military experts, with its nuclear submarine deterrents an obvious strength, though Putin’s navy is largely made up of older Soviet-era vessels lacking the ability to project power across the world in a wide-scale conflict.
Major reasons for this include Russia’s limited access to open oceans and warm-water ports, largely due to NATO and U.S. expansion creating choke points, as well as effectively not possessing any aircraft carriers, with its Admiral Kuznetsov carrier has been undergoing repairs since 2017 and is not believed to be operational.
Despite this, Russia does still possess the third-largest navy in the world by volume of units, behind only the United States and China, and including losses incurred during its war with Ukraine.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence cited the reason for operation July Storm as to assess its fleets’ readiness to conduct “non-standard operational tasks.”
This involves deploying multiple advanced systems, such as long-range precision weapons and unmanned technologies, as the country continues to up its dismissive rhetoric to both Europe and the U.S., which recently handed Putin a 50-day ultimatum to end the war with Ukraine.
Open-sea operations allow its navy to prepare units in anti-submarine warfare as well as routines in protecting military bases, shipping routes and other economic places of interest.
Wargame scenarios may also replicate drone and other kinds of military strikes while launching strikes of their own across both sea and land.
As mentioned, the scale of this exercise is telling, but Moscow insists it is just routine. Military analysts have been attracted to the large area inhabited by the drills, stretching from NATO’s eastern point, near Poland, to maritime routes in the Pacific.
July Storm is a further attempt by Putin to showcase his naval power across several theatres while also ensuring his units remain ‘match-fit’ in case of escalation.
Previously, on July 2, the Royal Navy tracked the surfaced Novorossiysk, a Russian Kilo-class submarine, as it passed through the North Sea and English Channel in a likely show of force, being so close to NATO waters.
The sub was met by a support tug as well as observation from HMS Mersey and navy helicopter assets.
