Thursday, June 08, 2017

Cast a Giant Shudder

Russia will conduct in the fall a large exercise in western Russia:

Although Russia has not disclosed the size of the Zapad (West) exercises that it holds every four years on its western borders, analysts have said that this year's drill may be the largest in quarter of a century, with a movement of about 100,000 Russian troops expected.

The Lithuanians are building a fence along their western border with Russia on the Kaliningrad exclave to prevent infiltration and incidents coming from the Russian side during the exercises (while hoping they remain exercises and not a cover for some type of aggression).

In light of the large number of Russian troops anticipated to participate, this is kind of pathetic:

The recent deployment of 1,000 NATO troops to Poland and each of the Baltic states has unnerved Moscow, which had warned in January that it was a bad idea.

Putin struts about like a modern Mussolini boasting of restoring the glories of Rome, yet a mere 4,000 NATO troops have unnerved Russia which can mass 100,000 troops for an exercise?

Seriously? Unnerved? By four battalion task forces stretching from the Gulf of Finland to the Ukrainian border?

That's pretty sad, dudes.