Russian, Indian Troops Complete Military Exercises

Russian, Indian Troops Complete Military Exercises in Himalayas

RIA Novosti
October 23, 2010

Russian and Indian troops completed a drill to kill a fictional terrorist leader in the Indian Himalayas as part of the Indra-2010 joint military exercises, which finished on Saturday.

"The experience we gained from the exercises is useful. We learned a lot from our Russian colleagues," Commander of the Indian contingent Brigadier-General Gopal said.

The commander of the Russian contingent, Major-General Vladimir Glinin said he was satisfied with the results of the military exercises.

The INDRA-2010 exercises were launched on October 16 at Chaubattia, in Uttarakhand, a mountainous area near India's border with China and Nepal.

Russia sent more than 200 troops from its 34th mountain brigade, based in the North Caucasus, to join the Indian troops in the drills.

The Indian and Russian military have conducted joint INDRA exercises since 2003, including biannual peacekeeping drills.

India's military cooperation with Russia goes back nearly half a century, and the Asian country accounts for about 40 percent of Russian arms exports.

China and Russia in Joint Military Exercise

Reuters
July 22, 2009

China and Russia were holding a joint military exercise on Wednesday, with the drill seen as a chance to beef up anti-terrorism cooperation after the recent flare-up of violence in China's Xinjiang region.

The "Peace Mission 2009" five-day exercise in northeast China comes weeks after China's worst ethnic unrest in decades between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese in the far-western region of Xinjiang that killed at least 197 people.

"To some extent, the July 5 Xinjiang riot pushed forward anti-terrorism cooperation between China and Russia," the China Daily newspaper quoted Major Wang Haiyun, a former Chinese military attache to Russia, as saying.

Russia itself has been grappling with rising violence in the North Caucasus regions of Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya. Russia and China are also wary of a rising tide of instability in post-Soviet Central Asia that has spilt over from Afghanistan.

"The situation in Central Asia itself, including Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan is not so good, so that's the most likely area of practical cooperation. And in fact they're learning new ways to fight against Islamic insurgents and Uighurs," said Vassily Kashin, a Chinese military expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Moscow.

Russia and China are core members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which some experts say is an attempt to form an alternative military bloc to NATO to counter the rising threats of separatism and extremism in Central Asia.

The SCO's members also include the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

WORLD'S POLICEMAN

"Some NATO officials ... fancy it is up to them to look after world order, performing the role of the world's policeman," said Russian military analyst Viktor Litovkin.

"But the situation in Afghanistan shows that NATO without Russia, without assistance from the Central Asian states, China and other leading nations of the region is unable to deal alone with the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

But some analysts said the smaller scale of the current bilateral exercise compared with a similar one in 2007 under the SCO, reflects a recent cooling of Sino-Russian military ties.

"In reality they are downgrading or reducing their military ties for the past couple of years," said Andrew Yang, the head of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies in Taiwan.

"(China has) already reached a stage where they can produce or develop their own indigenous and advanced weapons systems. They're no longer totally reliant on Russian support."

When asked during a video link with Beijing what new weapons Russia would show off during the drills, military analyst Litovkin said he believed there would not be any.

he exercise will involve some 3,000 army and air force personnel and over 40 fighters and helicopter gunships.

Russia's Zvezda television channel said the movement of Russian troops and weapons to China for the exercises was the biggest deployment of forces abroad by the nation's Far Eastern Military District since World War Two, when the Soviet Union crushed Japan's armed forces in China and Korea.

A Chinese fighter-bomber crashed during preparations for the military drill with Russia on Sunday, killing two pilots.

China and India to Hold Joint Anti-Terror Military Exercise

IndiaServer
December 5, 2008

India is likely to conduct an anti-terror military exercise with China from December 6-14. The joint military exercise will take place in Belgaum district of the southern Indian state of Karnataka.

The exercise code-named 'Hand in Hand 2008' will be attended by a Chinese contingent of 137 soldiers which is reported to have already reached the training site. According to Chinese defence ministry spokesperson, the joint military exercise is conducted as a part of a defense exchange and cooperation agreement signed by the two countries in 2006.

During the nine-day anti terror military exercise, the two armies will exchange weapons and other equipments apart from sharing communication tactics. The upcoming exercise will not only benefit the armies on utilizing military tactics of each other, but also boost the understanding and trust between them. The armies of both the nations had organized their first joint anti-terrorism training last year in Kunming in southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan.

At the moment, such types of joint anti-terror military exercises are very crucial for terror-prone India. The country has been literally devastated by series of bomb blasts and terror attacks in the past few months. Regular attacks and threatening by terrorist outfits are wake-up calls for the defense forces of the country to plunge into battlefield against them.



Religions in China:
Daoist (Taoist), Buddhist, Christian 3%-4%, Muslim 1%-2%
Note: officially atheist (2002 est.)

Religions in India:
Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (2001 census)

Religions in Russia:
Russian Orthodox 15-20%, Muslim 10-15%, other Christian 2% (2006 est.)
Note: estimates are of practicing worshipers; Russia has large populations of non-practicing believers and non-believers, a legacy of over seven decades of Soviet rule

Source: CIA Factbook

See: The Heathen Nations, Gog and Magog, Appear Upon the Scene Last