SIMFEROPOL, March 16. /TASS/. An air assault and artillery regiments of the Novorossiysk Guards Airborne Force formation were redeployed to the Opuk training ground in eastern Crimea for the drills that started on Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported.
"As part of the first stage of a large-scale command and staff exercise, the personnel and hardware have been delivered by a combined method (by aircraft and ships) from the Stavropol and Krasnodar Regions to the Crimean Peninsula. The paratroopers have begun planning combat operations as part of the command and staff exercise with the air assault and artillery regiments of the Novorossiysk Guards Airborne Force formation," the ministry said in a statement.
The paratroopers’ drills that will run until March 19 involve over 2,000 personnel and 500 items of combat and special hardware, aircraft and helicopters of military transport, assault and army aviation, the statement says.
The tasks of redeploying the personnel and military hardware to Crimea have been fulfilled, Regiment Commander Guards Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky said.
At the first stage of the drills, the signal units practiced continued command and control of troops under a notional enemy’s jamming, the statement says.