Russia will next month hold its biggest war games in nearly four decades, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told Russian news agencies on Tuesday, a massive military exercise that will also involve the Chinese and Mongolian armies. The exercise, called Vostok-2018 (East-2018), will take place in central and eastern Russian military districts and involve almost 300,000 troops, over 1,000 military aircraft, two of Russia’s naval fleets, and all its airborne units, agencies quoted Shoigu as saying. Source: Reuters
A spokesperson for the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, the Dutch military service that carries out police tasks, reports this to the ANP news agency. There will be mobile checks at the border between Belgium and the Netherlands, but not at those with Germany. Source De Tijd
China has welcomed Russian troops to hold joint strategic drills for the first time next week on the territory of the People’s Republic as part of growing ties between Beijing and Moscow. Source Newsweek
Two rockets launched from Lebanon on Wednesday struck Israel, which responded with artillery fire amid heightened regional tensions over an alleged Iranian attack on an oil tanker in the Gulf last week. Israel’s Magen David Adom national ambulance service said there were no casualties on the Israeli side of the hilly frontier, where the rockets ignited a brush fire. Source Reuters
