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1/ Russia's Zapad-2025 military exercises have come in for bitter criticism from Russian warbloggers for being a "circus performance" and "dogshit", that ignores the lessons of the war in Ukraine and showcases irrelevant capabilities. ⬇️
2/ The Zapad exercises, which were last held in 2021, are a heavily scripted demonstration of Russian military capabilities. Unlike NATO exercises, they make little contribution to improving military skills, as Russia's failures in 2022 showed vividly.
3/ 'Military Informant' highlights the demonstrations of low-level bombing and airborne landings as particularly pointless, as both capabilities performed disastrously at the start of the invasion and have been used little or not at all since:
4/ "The Ministry of Defence demonstrates an amazing level of taking into account the current experience of the Air Defence Forces in the framework of the Zapad-2025 exercises directed against NATO.
5/ "Thus, Tu-22M3 and Su-34 bombers practiced strikes with free-falling aerial bombs from low altitudes , and airborne units loaded their BMD-2s into Il-76MD transport aircraft for parachute landing behind enemy lines.
6/ "Not exercises, but another beautiful circus performance for generals sitting on a pedestal with binoculars."
7/ The airborne exercise he mentions involves a long-distance flight on Il-76 aircraft followed by a simulated landing behind enemy lines and a combat training mission. 'Informant' says it would be useless against anyone but "rebellious Zulus":
8/ "In the scheme of things, history does not know of any successful airborne operations on such a large scale, with the possible exception of the [1941] Crete Operation (Mercury), which, despite its success, cost the Germans dearly and was considered a “Pyrrhic victory.”
9/ "The current evil and disgusting reality nips in the bud any attempts to drop paratroopers and equipment from huge roaring ‘cows’, because air defence is designed to shoot down aerial targets, and such huge, roaring and clumsy targets as Il-76 are an easy kill for any SAM.
10/ "Of course, if the 'conditional enemy' is a tribe of rebellious Zulus, isolated from modern means of countering air targets, such operations will be successful, in other cases we will simply wash ourselves in blood..."
11/ 'Two Majors' says in the same vein that "this would be relevant nowadays only if we were to attack Indians somewhere in Africa, or fight cowboys in Mexico... But of course, this is not relevant now."
12/ "Because nowadays an FPV can rise to the jump altitude, that is, what altitude we jump at. Well, guys, yes, it is a minimum there, as far as I know, 600 metres to a maximum of 1,200. I think the regular army does not jump from 3,000 metres.
13/ "Therefore, of course, all this is not relevant. Everything is produced for some purpose, I don’t know. This may bring horror to Europe, America, NATO. But then again, they also understand that this is all dogshit.
14/ "I don’t know, it's you know, the planes expend fuel on this, plus shipping, transportation... property, parachutes, domes, tents, all this.
15/ "To me it seems that all this is nonsense, because where was it used? It is not relevant in the present time. At least not in the Airborne Forces."
16/ Kiril Fedorov calls Zapad "exercises for the sake of appearance" and criticises the appearance of the Tu-22M3 bombers, which were performing in a display that was supposedly "taking into account the combat experience gained."
17/ "Thus, the aircraft, which is no longer produced, dropped aerial bombs from a height of 1 km, and no, not gliding ones."
18/ 'PNV: Out of Format' writes: "I hasten to remind you that annual exercises (which are approved by the senior command at the headquarters of the Russian Armed Forces) are nothing more than an expression of the combat training experience that units and formations…
19/ …have mastered during the previous military training year. And if you are talking about the GENERALISATION OF COMBAT EXPERIENCE, then the military training period must correspond to this EXPERIENCE...
20/ "In their units and formations during the military training year, servicemen can use the means they consider necessary to master GENERALISED EXPERIENCE. Even launch paper airplanes instead of real ones.