2,000 Russian servicemen from its Airborne troops (VDV) have been taking part in landing combat drills near the country's border with Estonia and Latvia.
The VDV troopers, usually stationed in the Tulskaya region, began the exercise yesterday and it has continued throughout today, incorporating combat as well as landing maneuvers.
"The key phase of the tactical exercise with the landing of personnel and military equipment, and also with combat fire takes place on the 16-17 July outside Pskov," Yevgeny Meshkov, a spokesman for the VDV troops told state agency Itar-Tass yesterday.
Over the two days the 2,000 paratroopers conducted jumps and landed over 30 units of military equipment from an Ilyushin IL-76 military transport aircraft. The same type of aircraft was reported to have violated Finland's airspace by the Finnish Air Force last week.
The Pskov region is one of Russia's westernmost regions and borders both Latvia and Estonia which are EU as well as Nato members. The defence ministries of the two countries were not immediately available to comment on the exercise which is likely to be seen as provocative.
According to Meshkov, the exercises would consist of paratroopers' deployment to the site of the exercise by parachute, after which they would conduct more jumps in a hypothetical combat scenario where they would land behind designated enemy lines. They would parachute in with armored vehicles and practice combat from across riverbanks.
The practice would also include conducting a mobile defence in training courses near Pskov.
When asked for comment, Nato referred Newsweek to secretary general Jens Stoltenberg's speech in Washington DC in May during which he condemned Russia's spike in exercises and drills as circumventing agreements about reducing conventional forces and notifying neighbours of drills. such as the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and the Vienna Document.
"Russia has found ways around [agreements] to avoid notifying the largest military exercises in the post-Cold War era," Stoltenberg said.
"The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty put limits on the number and movement of equipment like tanks and fighter planes. But Russia unilaterally suspended implementation," the secretary general added.
Martin Hurt from Estonia's International Centre for Defence and Security expressed his fear earlier this year that Russia's snap exercises in particular increase the risk of a more serious redeployment of Russian troops toward the Baltics. Neither the Lithuanian or Estonian Ministries of Defence dismissed this.
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