Russian Navy - News and Analysis

Between August 03 and August 12, the Russian Baltic Fleet held its annual Ocean Shield exercise in the Baltic Sea. While smaller compared to last years exercise with only 30 warships participating, this years exercise was more imported because it was build on an offensive scenario, rather then a defensive one during 2019. While the opposing forces of the 2019 exercise were identified as NATO forces, the opposing force of the 2020 was less easy to identify. The offensive nature and swift sea control gained by the Russian Navy could suggest an surprise attack against NATO when few NATO forces are present, or the attack against a neutral country with significant maritime forces, most likely Sweden. Just like last year, the exercise could be monitored through the use of open source material but unlike 2019 there was less available. Especially the Russian open sources such as state media and main newspapers were less vocal about the progress of Ocean Shield 2020. The third part of the exerc...

On April 20 and 21, Naval Infantry units of the Baltic Fleet conducted a large scale amphibious exercise in the Kaliningrad Oblast as part of a scheduled two-day exercise. The exercise involved embarkation, transit and landing against a defended coast. The exercise started on April 20 at the port of Baltiysk in the Kaliningrad Oblast where 20 BTR-82A Infantry Fighting Vehicles were loaded on board of several amphibious warships. The amphibious warships were identified as the Ropucha class LSTs RFS Kaliningrad and RFS Korolev, supported by the Zubr class hovercraft RFS Eugene Koreshov. At least two Dyugon class landing craft were also seen taking part in the exercise. BTR-82 being loaded on board of the Ropucha class LSTs The fast loading of the Ropucha class LSTs was made possible due to the fact that these vessels were moored in the Mediterranean way, meaning stern towards the land and the bow pointed to the open sea. Not only allows this way of mooring an easy and fast de...

Exercise Ocean Shield 2019 (Okeanskiy Shchit 2019) was a large scale naval exercise conducted by the Baltic Fleet between August 1 and 9, 2019. The exercise involved the participation of over 49 warships from two seperate fleets, Northern and Baltic, with 20 support ships. Over 58 aircraft from both the army and naval aviation were involved as well. Russian figures state that a total of 10,634 military personnel were involved in the exercise. The exercise involved a wide variety of smaller exercises which will be discussed in further detail below in the form of daily reports followed by a general summary. The first focus of the exercise was to check the combat readiness of the Russian naval forces in the Baltic Sea and the further development of skills in operating the fleet and executing different tasks during this exercise. Several Russian sources state that lessons learned from naval deployments at the Syrian coast were also taken into account during the exercise. A lot of info...