he job of organising nato’s biggest military exercise since the cold war kept Admiral James Foggo, then the commander of American naval forces in Europe and Africa, busy in the summer of 2018. Trident Juncture was to gather 50,000 personnel, 250 aircraft and 65 warships in the European Arctic in October. As logistically taxing as that sounds, it was small fry compared with what Russia was planning in Siberia in September. The Vostok exercises would be the biggest since the Soviet Union’s mammoth Zapad drills of 1981, boasted Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister: they would involve 300,000 troops, 1,000 aircraft and 80 warships.
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