Beijing and Moscow have gotten closer under Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian equivalent Vladimir Putin, especially since the commencement of the Ukraine war. Now, Russia, China and India are set to hold the massive “Vostok” war games in two weeks.
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China’s defense ministry announced on Wednesday that its involvement in the joint exercises was “unrelated to the current international and regional situation,” and that Chinese troops would be traveling to Russia to participate in war games alongside troops from India, Belarus, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and other largely anti-Western nations.
While waging war in Ukraine, Moscow this month announced intentions to perform “Vostok” (East) exercises from August 30 to September 5. Without specifying them, it was stated at the time that some foreign forces would take part. It turns out that little under 50% of the world’s population falls under the “foreign forces.”
According to Reuters, China’s defense ministry stated that its participation in the drills was a result of an ongoing bilateral annual cooperation agreement with Russia.
“The aim is to deepen practical and friendly cooperation with the armies of participating countries, enhance the level of strategic collaboration among the participating parties, and strengthen the ability to respond to various security threats,” the statement said.
The announcement that India and China will partake in the war games together is probably the most intriguing part of it, though it is still unclear whether the two nations’ troops, who are hardly close, will take part in the same exercises or different ones spread out over 13 different training grounds.
Following the violations by the PLA in April 2020, Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a standoff that has stretched for more than two years along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh. Disengagement has occurred in several LAC regions, but negotiations to reestablish the status quo in the remaining hotspots, like Hot Springs, Demchok, and Depsang, have been sluggish.
Beijing and Moscow have gotten closer under Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian equivalent Vladimir Putin, especially since the commencement of the Ukraine war, which Xi regards as a grand rehearsal for the invasion of Taiwan. More than 10,000 soldiers participated in joint military drills between China and Russia last August in north-central China. Sergei Shoigu, the minister of defense of Russia, lauded the Sibu/Cooperation-2021 exercises in China’s Ningxia region and urged they be expanded.
China and Russia conducted coordinated naval exercises in the Sea of Japan in October. The first coordinated patrols between Chinese and Russian vessels were conducted in the western Pacific a few days later. The following month, during what Beijing referred to be routine training, two Chinese and seven Russian aircraft entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone, prompting the military there to scramble fighter jets.
Beijing and Moscow pledged a “no limits” alliance just before Russia entered Ukraine on February 24; nevertheless, U.S. officials said they have not observed China helping Russia circumvent sanctions or supply it with military hardware.
The eastern military area of Russia encompasses a portion of Siberia and is headquartered at Khabarovsk, near the Chinese border.
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