Russia's largest ever 'war games' underway in the far east

Russia's Vostok-2018 (East-2018) military training operation eclipses the Soviet Union's largest-ever exercise, held in 1981. About 300,000 troops, 1,000 airplanes, helicopters and drones, 36,000 combat vehicles and as many as 80 warships were involved this year, according to Russia's Defense Ministry.

Two of the Russian soldiers taking part in the military drills in Primorskyi. Russia's previous military exercise in the region, Vostok-2014, was around half the size, with 155,000 soldiers taking part. The exercises in the east of Russia are usually always larger than those in the west, because they are not limited by the OSCE's Vienna Document which restricts the scale of drills.

A Russian SU-25 attack plane, designed to support ground troops. Russia recently announced that the latest version of the aircraft has entered production. This one is seen flying over a ship during Vostok-2018 military drills at the Klerk training ground in Russia's Primorskyi region.

As he watched some of the drills, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to "further strengthen" the armed forces and supply them with "the latest-generation weapons and technical equipment" at a time of rising tension in Moscow's ties with Washington and Brussels.

Some 3,500 Chinese troops will take part in the exercise as well as soldiers from Mongolia. Putin praised Russia's increasingly close ties with China as he met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping ahead of Vostok-2018. The two neighbors have trained together about 30 times since 2003, but this is the first time China has participated at a strategic level.

A Russian military helicopter lands troops on at the Klert training ground in the Primorskyi region. The main aim of the weeklong drills was to check the military's readiness to move troops large distances, to test how closely infantry and naval forces cooperated, and to perfect command and control procedures. They have been condemned by NATO as a rehearsal for "large-scale conflict."

NATO had also raised concerns last year around Zapad-2017 (West-2017) when Russia and Belarus conducted a week of joint drills and deployed soldiers near the territories of the alliance's eastern members. According to official figures, some 12,700 servicemen took part in the drills, just under the 13,000-troop maximum limit permitted under the Vienna Document.