Russia trained officers for the invasion of Japan and South Korea

The Russian military prepared a detailed list of targets for a possible war with Japan and South Korea that included nuclear power stations and other civilian facilities, according to 2013-2014 secret files seen by the Financial Times Times.

Strike plans, including a leaked set of Russian army documents, cover 160 places such as roads, bridges and factories, which have been identified as targets to stop “the regrouping of troops in the areas of the operation plan”.

Moscow’s deep concern about its eastern flank is highlighted in the documents, shown to the FT by western sources. Russian military planners fear that the country’s eastern borders will be exposed in any war with Nato and are vulnerable to attack by US assets and regional allies.

The documents are drawn from a collection of 29 secret Russian military files, which focus mainly on training officers for potential conflicts on the country’s eastern border from 2008-14 and are still considered of strategic importance. of Russia.

The FT this year reported whether the documents contained previously unknown details about the principles of operation for the use of nuclear weapons and explain martial arts situations a Chinese invasion and for deep hitting within Europe.

Asia has become central to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy to pursue an all-out invasion of Ukraine and his broader anti-Nato stance.

In addition to its growing economic dependence on China, Moscow is recruiting 12,000 troops from North Korea to fight in Ukraine while supporting Pyongyang economically and militarily. After firing a test missile into Ukraine in November, Putin said “the territorial conflict in Ukraine has taken on global dimensions”.

William Alberque, a former Nato arms control official now at the Stimson Center, said that, together, the leaked documents and North Korea’s recent deployment proved “once and for all that the theaters of war in Europe and Asia are directly and inextricably linked”. He said: “Asia will not solve conflicts in Europe, nor will Europe sit idly by if war breaks out in Asia.”

The target list for Japan and South Korea was in a presentation intended to outline the capabilities of the Kh-101 non-nuclear submarine. Experts who reviewed it for the FT said the contents suggested it was distributed in 2013 or 2014. The document is marked with the logo of the Combined Arms Academy, a training college for senior officers.

The US has significant military presence in South Korea and Japan. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in January 2022, both countries have entered into a foreign control alliance led by Washington to put pressure on the Kremlin’s war machine.

Alberque said the documents show how Russia saw a threat from its western allies in Asia, which the Kremlin fears will pressure or provoke a US-led attack on its military forces in the region. including missile brigades. “In the event that Russia were to suddenly attack Estonia, they would have to hit the US forces and their helpers in Japan and Korea,” he said.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, did not respond to a request for comment.

The first 82 sites on Russia’s target list are military in nature, such as central and regional command headquarters of the Japanese and South Korean armed forces, radar installations, air and naval bases .

The rest are public infrastructure sites including road and rail tunnels in Japan such as the Kanmon tunnel that connects the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. Energy infrastructure is also important: the list includes 13 power plants, such as nuclear power plants in Tokai, as well as oil refineries.

In South Korea, the main civilian targets are bridges, but the list also includes industrial sites such as the Pohang steelworks and chemical plants in Busan.

Much of the presentation is about how a hypothetical strike would occur using the non-nuclear Kh-101 warhead. The chosen example is Okushiritou, a Japanese radar station on a hilly offshore island. One slide, which discusses such an attack, is accompanied by a live gif of a massive explosion.

The slides reveal the care Russia took in selecting the target list. The message against the two South Korean bunkers includes estimates of the force required to breach their defenses. The lists also take into account other factors such as the size and potential output of the equipment.

Pictures of the buildings in Okushiritou, taken from a Japanese radar station, are also included in the slides, along with the exact measurements of the buildings and structures.

Michito Tsuruoka, an assistant professor at Keio University and a former researcher at Japan’s Defense Ministry, said the conflict with Russia was a particular challenge for Tokyo if it was the result of Russia spreading the conflict. from Europe – the so-called “high rise”.

“In a conflict with North Korea or China, Japan would get warnings in advance. We would have time to prepare and try to act. But when it comes to rising from Europe, it will be time to short of warning for Tokyo and Japan may have few options on their own to prevent conflict.”

Although the Japanese military, and the air force in particular, have long been concerned about Russia, Tsuruoka said Russia is “rarely seen as a security threat by ordinary Japanese”.

Russia and Japan never signed a formal peace treaty to end the second world war over the dispute over the Kuril Islands. Soviet forces captured the Kurils at the end of the war in 1945 and expelled the Japanese population from the islands, which are now home to about 20,000 Russians.

Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister at the time, said in January that his government was “fully committed” to negotiations on the issue.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia, said to X in response: “We do not criticize the ‘Japanese attitude’.” . . These are not ‘contested areas’ but Russia.”

Russia’s plans show confidence in its missile systems that have long been proven to be overkill. The mock mission against Okushiritou involved using 12 Kh-101s launched from a single Tu-160 heavy bomber. The document assesses the probability of destroying the target at 85 percent.

However, Fabian Hoffmann, a medical researcher at the University of Oslo, said that during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kh-101 proved to be slower than expected and had difficulty penetrating areas with air protection.

Hoffmann added: “Kh-101 has an external engine, which is a common feature of Soviet and Russian missiles. However, this design choice significantly increases the missile’s radar signature.”

Hoffmann also noted that the missile was less accurate than expected. “For low-yield missile systems that depend on their accuracy to destroy their target, this is an obvious problem,” he said.

The second proposal by Japan and South Korea provides a rare insight into Russia’s habit of constantly monitoring its neighbors’ air defenses.

The report covers the operation of the Tu-95 heavy bombers, which were sent to test the air defenses of Japan and South Korea on February 24 2014. The operation coincided with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and joint military exercises of US-Korea, Foal Eagle. 2014.

The Russian bombers, according to the file, took off from the Ukrainka long-range air command center in the Russian Far East for a 17-hour circuit around South Korea and Japan to report responses.

It notes that there were 18 routes involving 39 aircraft. The longest encounter was a 70-minute escort by a Japanese F4 Phantom which, according to the pilots of In Russia, those who were not “armed”. Only seven roads were blocked by warplanes carrying surface-to-air missiles.

The route is almost identical to that taken by two Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft earlier this year when they circled Japan during strategic Pacific exercises in September, including a flight over disputed territory near Kurils.