(Bloomberg) -- President Vladimir Putin said the Russian Navy is holding its largest combat drills in three decades as he hit out at the US over an accelerating arms race.
“The US is seeking to achieve a tangible military advantage, and in that way break the existing security architecture and balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region,” Putin said Tuesday in a televised videoconference with defense chiefs. “We will continue to strengthen our navy, including its strategic nuclear component.”
The drills codenamed “Ocean” will continue until Sept. 16 and involve more than 400 vessels including warships, submarines and support vessels, as well as more than 120 naval aircraft and in excess of 90,000 personnel, the Russian Defense Ministry said on its Telegram channel. They’ll take place in the Pacific and Arctic oceans, and the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic seas, it said.
The ministry didn’t list the Black Sea among the locations, where its warships have been the target of repeated attacks by Ukrainian drones in recent months.
The “Ocean” codename is the same as that used in the 1970s and 1980s for the biggest combat drills carried out by the Soviet Union’s navy in the period after World War II, according to the ministry.
Four Chinese warships and a logistics vessel have also joined Russian ships off the Sea of Japan for exercises, the ministry said.
Moscow and Beijing have been intensifying economic and military cooperation since the start of the Kremlin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a partnership that prompted NATO to label China as a “decisive enabler” of the war effort.
Chinese and Russian naval forces earlier conducted a round of joint exercises in the western and northern Pacific Ocean, the Chinese Ministry of Defense said in July, adding that the operation was carried out in line with an annual plan and was not targeted at any third party.
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