Roger McDermott: Russia’s armed forces rehearse the defense of Crimea

By Roger McDermott.

Published Nov. 4, 2021 at 2:21 am

This handout picture released by the Russian Defence Ministry on April 22, 2021 shows Russian military helicopters taking part in a military drill over the Opuk training ground not far from the town of Kerch, on the Kerch Peninsula in the east of the Crimea.

Photo by AFP

At the end of October, the Russian Armed Forces staged a military exercise in Crimea to rehearse the defense of the occupied peninsula. The military deployed forces from the Southern Military District/Joint Strategic Command (Obyedinennyye Strategicheskoye Komandovanie—OSK) to the Opuk training ground in Crimea, where they practiced the defense of the territory in a variety of tactical episodes involving the Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF), Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskikh Sil—VKS), Ground Forces and naval infantry.