MINSK, December 1. /TASS/. The armed forces of Belarus and Russia will hold a joint military exercise codenamed Union Shield in September 2015 on Russian soil, the press-service of the Belarusian Defense Ministry said. The Allied Command of the regional army group will conduct a staff exercise. Belarusian and Russian troops will practice live missile launches. The Collective Security Treaty Organization in 2015 will hold a series of military exercises: Angry Falcon, Cooperation, Enduring Brotherhood, and Fast Eagle.

Russia in the outgoing year has been very active in testing troops’ combat readiness. Inspections have been held of the Western, Central and Eastern military districts and large-scale exercises held with the CIS countries involving the newest hardware and assault groups. The Space Force, commando units, the Air Force and the Navy have practiced interaction. Last September’s exercise was the largest in the CIS over the past twenty years. Russia’s strategic exercise named East (Vostok) involved 155,000 Russian troops. It was held at twenty sites in Russia in territories equal in size to a third of Europe - the Sakhalin island, the Kamchatka and Chukchi peninsulas, the Primorye Territory and in the Sea of Japan, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea and also the East Siberian and Chukchi seas. A payload of ten thousand tons of rockets, ammunition, fuel and food supplies was airlifted over a distance of 3,000 kilometers. The aggregate milage of combat vehicles’ totalled 200,000 kilometers and of naval ships, 15,000 nautical miles.