Blog

13 Dec 2021 News

IMINT Analysis – 56th Air Assault Regiment, Feodosia, Crimea

In March 2021 the Russian Minister of Defence, Sergei Shoigu announced that the Kamyshin-based 56th Airborne Brigade would be downgraded to a regiment and deployed to Feodosia in Crimea. There it would go...

26 Nov 2021 News

The Map – The Ukrainian Military Intelligence

A few days ago, the Ukrainian Military Intelligence released a map of Russians BTGs building up near the border. Dara took a stab at it and shared some valuable thoughts. Now I would like to offer a...

24 Nov 2021 News

The build-up

More than three weeks ago I wrote a short post on this blog about the movement of Russian troops near the border with Ukraine. There I linked the deployments of the 1st GTA elements to Pogonovo to a training...

02 Nov 2021 News

Yelnya Barracks – Analysing Maxar’s image

Yesterday Maxar released images of the camp and barracks at Yelnya. Here are several observations based on the imagery analysis and the general context. But first, one caveat. I have no access to the...

31 Oct 2021 News

Russian land forces’ movements in October

There has been an increased number of reports about the current (perceived) Russian Armed Forces build-up near Ukraine. On the one hand, there are units belonging to the 41st CAA that have left Pogonovo...

22 Sep 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 15 (Unit numbers)

Here comes another post about Zapad co-written with my good colleague Obronny. In days leading to the active phase of Zapad-2021, Russian and Belarusian media (both military and civilian) showed maps that...

17 Sep 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 14 (An airborne exercise)

First things first, many thanks to Colonel (rtd) Ireneusz Kulesza for this help in analysing the map you will see below. On the first day of the active phase of ‘Zapad-2021', some 600 paras (a reinforced B...

10 Sep 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 13 (THE Map)

Guest post by Obronny. Yesterday the Belarusian news portal, Smartpress, released a news report with images of what appears to be a map with the Zapad scenario to be practiced in Belarus. Pomorie is...

09 Sep 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 12 (The Active Phase)

The analysis of Zapad is moving to Michael Kofman's blog. There we will provide daily updates on Zapad's frivolities. I hope you enjoyed our short analyses on events leading up to Zapad. Thanks,Konrad...

08 Sep 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 11 (Zapad in IMINT)

The third iteration of our 'Zapad in IMINT' series looks at three sites: The Baranovichi Air Base in Belarus hosts a small contingent of Russian army aviation, which came there in late August. This...

04 Sep 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 10 (Reserve)

As reservists were being called up in support of Zapad, between 18 and 28 August between 50 to 250 main battle tanks were removed from the 7024th (?) Storage and Maintenance Base in Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy. This...

03 Sep 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 9 (Logistics)

Today’s post will discuss a logistics exercise, which occurred at the Vyborg port on 24 August. It was one of the drills that fitted into larger logistics preparations that were being undertaken before the a...

24 Aug 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 8 (Opposing forces)

Today's entry is based on Obronny's Twitter post. Zapad-2017 and conditional enemies As you may remember, the 2017 iteration of 'Zapad' was sponsored by three 'conditional' enemies. Vesbaria and...

23 Aug 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 7 (Manpower)

On 20 August the First Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of International Military Cooperation of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Major General Yevgeny Ilyin, stated that the Zapad-2021 exercise would...

20 Aug 2021 Analysis

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 6 (Zapad in IMINT)

As information about unit movements in support of 'Zapad' is scarce, we have launched an initiative, which seeks to present to the public an IMINT perspective on Russian and Belarusian preparations. 'Zapad...

18 Aug 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 5 (Belarusian units in Russia)

“Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies”, part 2 This will be a long post, so please bear with me. More than a week ago, I wrote a post about a press conference that the Belarusian Chief of Defence Sta...

05 Aug 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 4 (Belarusian CDS presser)

"Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies" Today the Belarusian Chief of Defence Staff and First Deputy Minister of Defence, Major General Viktor Gulevich, held a press conference on what Russia and...

02 Aug 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – ORBAT

The purpose of this blog post is to provide an up-to-date order of battle data of Russian and Belarusian units that took part in Zapad-2021. Due to the nature of the exercise, its sheer size and the nature of...

26 Jul 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 3 (First deployments into Belarus)

It is time for another update on Zapad preparations. (In all fairness, there were numerous interesting events related to Zapad that occurred between the last blog entry and late July. I hope I will get back...

08 Apr 2021 News

IMINT Analysis – 39th Helicopter Regiment, Dzhankoy Air Base – Crimea

Russian 4th Air and Air Defence Army (HQ Rostov-on-Don) controls three aviation regiments in Crimea. There is the 37th Composite Aviation Regiment deployed at Gvardeyskoye. It has one squadron each of Su-24Ms...

16 Feb 2021 News

18th Motor Rifle Division – the Kaliningrad Oblast

A couple of weeks ago Izvestia (and then the CAST’s blog) reported on the composition of the Kaliningrad-based motor rifle division. According to Izvestia, the 79th Motor Rifle Brigade will be converted i...

19 Jan 2021 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 2 (Date confirmed)

On 18 January 2021, the Belarusian MoD reported that the joint Russo-Belarusian strategic-operational exercise, Zapad-2021, will take place between 10-16 September. According to the Belarusian Minister of...

30 Oct 2020 News

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 1

In August or September 2021, Russia and its ally, Belarus, will conduct its quadrennial Zapad-21 joint strategic-operational exercise. Regardless of how Russia portrays the drill, its goal has always been...

28 Sep 2020 News

Slavic Brotherhood – Day by day developments

Although the Slavic Brotherhood ended on Friday, I thought it would be useful to prepare a day by day summary of what happened and what was practised. The Slavic Brotherhood exercise, which has been held...

16 Sep 2020 News

Endgame? Russia to deepen military co-operation with Belarus

For many years Russia has been pushing Belarus to deepen military co-operation, even though both countries are already militarily integrated to a large extent. They hold large-scale exercises every two years...

27 Aug 2020 Analysis

IMINT Analysis – Grodno Training Range

In response to the growing threat from NATO and possible interference in Belarusian domestic affairs, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence is conducting a country-wide readiness exercise. For background stories...

25 Aug 2020 Analysis

Mobilisation of the Belarusian Armed Forces

According to Belarusian MoD press releases from recent days, the armed forces are going through an unprecedented period of mobilisation, which seeks to increase the readiness of the armed forces to respond to...

19 Aug 2020 News

Why Russia will not deploy into Belarus (for now)

In the last few days, reports started surfacing on Twitter showing the alleged movement of Russian National Guard units into Belarus. At the very least this indicates Russian increasing role in the Belarusian...

01 Apr 2020 Analysis

Smerch from Kaliningrad

On 29th March the Russian daily newspaper, Izvestia, reported that the Kaliningrad-based 244th Artillery Brigade had been equipped with BM-30 Smerch (Tornado) multiple rocket launcher system (MLRS). The...

05 Mar 2020 News

Kaliningrad’s 2S19M1 SPHs land in a tank regiment

During the May 2019 Victory Day parade in Kaliningrad, the locally-based armed forces showcased the newest 2S19M1Msta-S howitzer to the general public. At that time, the spokesperson of the Baltic Sea Fleet...

19 Jan 2020 News

2019 marked the lowest combat aircraft delivery rate to VKS since 2008.

Last year the Russian Air Force received just 14 combat aircraft to its frontline units, which marks the lowest delivery rate since 2009. At a stretch, if two pre-production MiG-35s and four Russian Knights’ S...