Russia: new winter training season kicks off in Southern Military District.

Missile troops and artillery, air defense units, NBC defense troops, signal troops and engineer troops, will be engaged in field training under supervision of military command and control units of the Southern Military District. In total it is planned to carry out over 300 tactical exercises (joint, bilateral and with other forces) during the 2019 training year. Troops will be involved in over 3,000 live-fire drills at the training grounds. Drivers will perform more than 5,500 test and control exercises for driving combat vehicles.

Russian paratrooper in winter training (Picture source:  Russian MoD/Imgur)

Combat training exercises will be organized at more than 30 training grounds of the Southern Military District in the Rostov, Astrakhan, Volgograd, Kuban, Stavropol regions, as well as in North Caucasus, in the Crimea, on the training fields in Abkhazia, Armenia and South Ossetia. Special attention will be attached to training for the large-scale command post exercise of the joint force grouping under the leadership of Colonel General Aleksander Dvornikov, commander of the Southern Military District. Its active phases will take place at the training grounds of the Rostov, Krasnodar regions and the Republic of Crimea involving about 7,500 troops and more than 2,500 pieces of armaments.

A joint Russian-Pakistani exercise is to be held in the highlands of Karachay-Cherkessia, a joint Russian-Algerian exercise –– in Volgograd region and a joint Russian – Egyptian army air defense exercise -- in Egypt. In addition, in the new training year, there will be joint tactical exercises involving Russian formations of the Southern Military District stationed in the republics of the Transcaucasus with units of the Armed Forces of the Republics of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Armenia.