WASHINGTON, September 2. /TASS/. The current large-scale military exercises, Vostok, show that Russia is far from being isolated on the world stage, despite the efforts by the West, Sarang Shidore, a director of studies at the Washington-based Quincy Institute, said in an article published by Responsible Statecraft, an online magazine, on Thursday.
He stated that the previous Vostok drills in 2018 were bigger than the current exercises.
"But the true significance of Vostok 2022 is not size, but its participants. This year, the list of countries from outside the former Soviet Union joining as participants or observers is much longer and, apart from Mongolia, also includes Algeria, Syria, Laos, Nicaragua, and India," the analyst said.
Shidore earlier worked at the geopolitical risk firm Stratfor, which news media sometimes refers to as the shadow CIA.
The analyst said China’s participation in Vostok-2022 is the most important. The security engagement between Moscow and Beijing has garnered global attention since February, when Russian President Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in their joint statement enunciated "no limits" for their partnership, Shidore wrote. In fact, he said, Russia and China have been strongly converging since the 2014-15.
The security partnership of the countries "has steadily grown closer, with increasingly sophisticated joint exercises (including in distant regions such as the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea), sales of Russia’s most advanced weapons systems such as the S-400 and the Su-35 to Beijing, and co-development of defense equipment," the analyst said.
"China and Russia can be said to be informal allies, a development brought on in substantial measure by the simultaneous containment strategies of Washington toward both," he shared.
Another significant participant of the exercises is India, according to the researcher.
"A close U.S. partner and even a quasi-ally on China, India has nevertheless taken a sharply different view on the Ukraine conflict, not condemning Russia by name, and greatly increasing its oil purchases from Moscow," he said.
The analyst said India national security advisor, when travelling to Moscow on August 17-18, "reportedly assured Russia that India was not in any camp" regarding the special military operation in Ukraine.
"India is also a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a grouping led by China and Russia, and takes part in security dialogues and military exercises under its rubric. These include an upcoming counter-terror exercise in India in which Chinese, Russian, Iranian and Pakistani troops (among others) will participate," Shidore wrote.
The analyst concludes the article by saying that more than six months into the Russian operation, "the United States and its European allies have made almost no headway in adding to their coalition ranged against Russia. Except for Japan, and to an extent Singapore, the major Asian and Eurasian states are not only not in, but some of them seem to be building even deeper ties with Russia. Washington may wish to reflect as to why its Russia strategy is failing to excite most Asians."
On February 24 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aims to demilitarize and de-Nazify the country. The West retaliated to the Russian decision by imposing sweeping sanctions on the country. Also, Western countries started shipments of weapons to Kiev, which by now are worth billions of dollars. Some Western politicians have described the situation as an economic war on Russia. Putin said on March 16 that Western sanctions bear the signs of an aggression and the West pursues a long-term policy of containing Russia.