Another Russian military exercise is over, and some Western commentators would have us believe that we ought to be heaving a collective sigh of relief that Putin’s legions didn’t use this as an excuse for another invasion. Of course, that was very overblown hype. Instead, what we saw was a Russian military still clinging to outmoded ways of war, as if its armoured columns had not been blocked and burnt when they rolled into Ukraine in 2022.
The Zapad-2025 (West-2025) exercises, which concluded on Tuesday, involved perhaps 30,000 Russian and Belarusian soldiers in a wargame stretching from the Arctic Circle to Belarus. This was the latest iteration of a biennial series of exercises, although it was skipped in 2023. Given that the much larger 2021 exercises were used by Moscow as an opportunity to prepare for the 2022 invasion, perhaps there were some grounds for caution, but that quickly shaded into hysteria.
Far from being a cause for fear and loathing, Zapad-2025 gave us much to celebrate
Only around 8,000 soldiers – not even a division in strength – were in Belarus, and of those, fewer than 2,000 were Russian. Meanwhile, if Russia was fighting the last war, one might be forgiven for thinking Europe was eagerly looking to the next. Poland closed its border with Belarus, ostensibly on security grounds, while mustering more than 30,000 of its own soldiers near to it in its Iron Defender exercises. Neighbouring Lithuania and Latvia are, meanwhile, running their own exercises with 17,000 and 12,000 troops, respectively. As if that were not enough, Nato’s Joint Expeditionary Force is running TARASSIS, a sequence of exercises in the Baltic theatre.
Besides, although Zapad was long on pyrotechnic photo opportunities, arguably it fell short as a convincing display of military capabilities. Russia’s wargames tend in practice to be less about honing its soldiers’ skills and more about theatrical displays of carefully choreographed excellence. A retired Russian colonel once described them to me as ‘generals playing make-believe war’.
Although there is no question that Russia is learning many of the tactical lessons of the war in Ukraine, at the strategic and operational level, they are still cosplaying a doctrine arguably already out of date even when the Cold War ended. This is one characterised by massed combined arms operations of the sort that drones and modern antitank missiles have made so impractical today.
Russia’s own hawkish ‘milblogger’ community has been quick to deride Zapad-2025 for showcasing tactics that have been proven to be dangerous and futile in Ukraine, from low-level passes to unguided bombs and parachute drops, both of which would be chewed apart by modern air defences. They have also criticised the concentrations of armoured vehicles that, even if now sporting jammers and ‘barbecues’, as the Russians call anti-drone cages, have proven such tempting targets for drones. No wonder one described it as ‘another beautiful circus performance for generals sitting on a pedestal with binoculars’.
The scale of the operation – down from perhaps 220,000 troops in 2021 – is also indicative. Despite occasional (and far-fetched) claims of some secret reserve army ready to smash into Ukraine or Nato, Moscow does not have ‘spare’ troops who can be operationally deployed en masse. Its remaining conscripts, barred from being sent to Ukraine, lack the training to launch any major operation without the stiffening of volunteers, currently largely deployed to the war.
Furthermore, after years of increasing suspicion and disconnection, these exercises were marked by a clear desire not to appear overly provocative. Operations were moved away from western borders and even the simulated use of long-range weapons like the new Oreshnik missile was only carried out on paper. There was also an unexpected willingness to allow in foreign journalists and two US military observers, the first such visit for years. Minsk made the invitation – ‘the best viewing seats will be provided for you,’ said Belarusian defence minister Viktor Khrenin – but this would not have been done without Moscow’s consent.
Far from being a cause for fear and loathing, then, Zapad-2025 gave us much to celebrate. Evidence that Moscow is indeed militarily at full stretch, not in a position to pick new fights. That whatever is happening on the ground in Ukraine, Russia – just like Nato – is still grappling with understanding quite how war is being changed by new technologies, as well as the crippling costs of re-engineering forces built to the assumptions of the 2010s or even the 1980s. That, even as its drones buzz through Polish and Romanian airspace, Moscow is still trying to balance intimidating bluster with a careful avoidance of anything likely to trigger real hostilities. So, perverse as it may sound, at least two cheers for Zapad!
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