BEIJING, August 24 /ITAR-TASS/. Armed forces from the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) states began joint anti-terrorist military exercises dubbed Peace Mission 2014 in China on Sunday.
Deputy Chief of Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s General Staff Wang Ning, who supervises the war games, declared them open at a ceremony at firing range Zhurihe, China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Around seven thousand servicemen from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Russia and Tajikistan will participate in war games from August 24 to 29. These military exercises will be most large-scale in the numerical strength of military forces involved in them under the SCO aegis. Different arms of troops, aviation, air defence systems and radio-electronic warfare will participate in drills.
Russian Armed Forces are represented by a battalion tactical group of the 36th motor rifle brigade from the Eastern Military District and an aviation group of the third Command of Air Force and Air Defence Troops.
At these war games Russian military contingent includes more than one thousand servicemen, 60 armoured vehicles, including 40 infantry combat vehicles BMP-2, 13 tanks T-72, over 20 missile and artillery gun systems - self-propelled artillery guns SAU 2S3M, multiple launch rocket systems BM-21 and others, more 60 vehicles of different assignments, eight helicopter gunships Mil Mi-8 AMTSh, four fighters Sukhoi Su-25 and two military transport airplanes Ilyushin Il-76.