Russia’s revived military power is a central element of the destabilisation campaign that it has been conducting in the Euro-Atlantic area for the last ten years. The capabilities developed enabled Russia’s aggressive actions against Ukraine in 2014 and its rapid intervention in Syria in 2015. The comprehensive military reform and modernisation efforts launched after the war with Georgia, including the exercise programme, have transformed the Russian Armed Forces into an effective tool in Russia’s destabilisation campaign against the West, with major implications for Euro-Atlantic security. It is underpinned by the Russian leadership’s interpretation of the ‘Colour Revolutions’ of the 1990s and early 2000s as, from Moscow’s perspective, a non-kinetic form of destabilisation operation waged by Western powers. This overhaul reflects Moscow’s evolving strategic worldview in line with the Russian perception that conflict can break out with little or no warning in multiple strategic directions. The conflict exposed significant capability shortfalls in the Russian Armed Forces and sparked the military overhaul that continues to this day. Russia’s first use of military force to revise the Euro-Atlantic security environment came in August 2008 in its short war against Georgia. This multidimensional campaign is the proper context within which to consider Russia’s strategic exercises and illuminates their instrumentality for achieving its foreign, security and defence policy aims – and the related implications for the security of NATO Allies. Military exercises and operations are part of that campaign. To these ends, Russia has launched a strategic destabilisation campaign against the post-Cold War liberal order, which President Putin views as counter to Russia’s long-term interests. Russia’s chief foreign and defence policy aims are to reassert a leading role for itself on the world scene to disrupt the current European security architecture to force negotiation of a new one and to rebuild a security perimeter against perceived external threats (primarily the United States and its NATO Allies).
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