The minister spoke about the cost of aviation fuel (1 ton costs $290) and said "over 50 civilian and military aircraft are used in the exercises to airlift personnel and hardware from Central Russia to the Far East." Inadequate control of the growth of prices of fuel and lubricants is restraining combat training, said the minister. This is why they were bought in winter, when they cost 20-25% less.
"These exercises are unique because we are simultaneously testing several elements of operation and effectiveness of the country's military organisation," said Ivanov. "To begin with, it is the prompt delivery of different forces and resources of the Land Force, Marines and the Airborne Force, and simulated hostilities in strange territory with the use of the hardware available in the Far East.
"The second unique element is the simultaneous test of transport readiness. We have not used so many military transports and civilian aircraft for a long time," said the minister. According to him, the Ministry of Transport acted "seriously and responsibly on the task and provided civilian aircraft. ...Like everywhere in the world, we used wide-bodied planes to airlift troops."
"We needed to check on the work of civilian and military air traffic controllers. The main request voiced by the president was to comply with safety norms when using aircraft so intensively. Everything was fine in the West-East corridors, though many controllers later admitted that they had never worked so intensively before. Their task was to track plans with 5-minute intervals and help them to land in the FarEastern airfields strictly by the second," said Sergei Ivanov.
"We tackled the issues of inter-theatre redeployment of forces and resources early this year, when we airlifted troops from the Far East to the West during exercises. We will hold one more, but slightly smaller, redeployment exercise this year in the Central Asian area. We will airlift spetsnaz troops to our air force base in Kant, Kyrgyzstan, for exercises.
"The idea is to ensure that different groups of permanent-readiness forces and resources act promptly," said the minister. "We will airlift them to a large distance and check their readiness to hostilities in a strange war theatre, strange terrain and climate. Of course, we could deliver them by rail, but this would take at least 2-3 weeks and time is what counts in modern wars and even individual conflicts."
"During these exercises, the troops and resources were delivered to the war theatre within a week. We have reached an agreement with the Ministry of Transport for next year to promptly provide aircraft, trains and automobiles for the delivery of military units."
The Defence Ministry and the army have been set new tasks, including the protection of transport communications, said the minister.
Replying to journalists' question about the attitude of China and Japan to intensive military exercises held in the relative proximity to their borders, Ivanov said, "We have no scenarios of the development of the situation in this or that region; our task is to hone the readiness, combat ability and manoeuvrability of troops."
The minister said that the exercises involve not only the redeployed units (about 900 servicemen and more than 100 vehicles) but also all permanent-readiness units deployed in the Far East, which is "about 5,000 troops and over 600 vehicles."
When asked how much the withdrawal of Russian bases from Georgia and their deployment in Russia would cost, Sergei Ivanov replied, "$300 million."
"In the absence of other sources of funds, the Finance Ministry can allocate something over and above the current budget of the Defence Ministry for the withdrawal of bases only after an agreement is signed with Georgia and the expenses are divided between certain period," said the minister.
He recalled that the Georgian authorities suggested creating a Russian-Georgian anti-terrorist centre in return for the accelerated withdrawal of Russian bases from Georgia. However, "so far, the creation of such centre is nothing more than an idea," said the minister. "And even as an idea it is not and cannot be connected in any way with the deadlines for the withdrawal and the status of the current Russian military bases. Until we create two new bases in Russia, we have nowhere to withdraw our bases from Georgia."
