Russia trained officers for attacks on Japan and South Korea

According to secret files from 2013-2014 seen by the Financial Times, Russia’s military prepared detailed target lists for possible war with Japan and South Korea that included nuclear power plants and other civilian infrastructure.

Strike plans, short of a leak set Russian military The document, covering 160 sites such as roads, bridges and factories, has been selected as a target to stop “the redeployment of troops for operational purposes”.

Documents shown to the FT by Western sources highlight Moscow’s growing concern over its eastern flank. Russian military planners fear that any war would expose the country’s eastern border nato and vulnerable to attacks from US assets and regional allies.

The documents are drawn from a cache of 29 secret Russian military files, which focused mainly on training officers for potential clashes on the country’s eastern border from 2008-14 and are still seen as relevant to Russian strategy.

The FT reported this year how the documents contained previously unknown details of the operating principles for use Nuclear weapons and scenario outlines for war-gaming a Chinese invasion and for deep injuries Inside Europe.

Asia has become central to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and his broader stance against NATO.

In addition to its increased economic dependence on China, Moscow has recruited 12,000 troops from North Korea to fight in Ukraine and in return has strengthened Pyongyang economically and militarily. “The regional conflict in Ukraine has taken on elements of a global nature,” Putin said after launching a test ballistic missile into Ukraine in November.

William Albark, a former NATO arms control official at the Stimson Center, said that together the leaked documents and the recent North Korean deployment proved “once and for all that the European and Asian theaters of war are directly and inextricably linked”. “Asia cannot stop the conflict in Europe, and Europe cannot sit idly by when war breaks out in Asia,” he said.

Japan and South Korea’s target list was included in a presentation intended to explain the capabilities of the Kh-101 non-nuclear cruise missile. Experts who reviewed it for the FT said the contents suggested it was broadcast in 2013 or 2014. The document is marked with the insignia of the Combined Arms Academy, a training college for senior officers.

The United States has significant forces in South Korea and Japan. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, both countries have joined a Washington-led export control coalition to pressure the Kremlin’s war machine.

Albark said the documents showed how Russia perceived threats from Western allies in Asia, whom the Kremlin fears would pin or enable a US-led attack on its military, including missile brigades, in the region. “In a situation where Russia was going to attack Estonia out of the blue, they would have to attack US forces and enablers in Japan and Korea as well,” he said.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov 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, radar installations, air bases and naval installations of the Japanese and South Korean armed forces.

The rest are civilian infrastructure sites, including Japan’s road and rail tunnels such as the Kanmon Tunnel that connects the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. Energy infrastructure is also a priority: the list includes 13 power plants, such as the Tokai nuclear complex, as well as fuel refineries.

In South Korea, the top civilian targets are bridges, but the list also includes industrial sites such as the Pohang Steelworks and a chemical factory in Busan.

Much of the presentation concerns how a hypothetical strike might unfold using a Kh-101 non-nuclear barrage. The example chosen is Okushiritu, a Japanese radar base on a mountainous offshore island. One slide, discussing this type of attack, is illustrated with an animated GIF of a large explosion.

The slides reveal the care Russia took in selecting the target list A note against two South Korean command-and-control bunkers includes estimates of the force required to breach their defenses. The lists note other details such as facility size and potential output.

Photographs of buildings at Okushiritu taken from inside the Japanese radar base are also included on the slides, with precise measurements of target buildings and facilities.

Michito Tsuruoka, an associate 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 resulted in Russia spilling over from Europe — so-called “horizontal escalation.”

“In a conflict with North Korea or China, Japan will have early warning. We may have time to prepare and try to take action. But when it comes to horizontal escalation from Europe, it will be a short warning period for Tokyo and conflict prevention for Japan. You will have fewer options than yourself.”

Although the Japanese military, and especially the air force, have long been concerned about Russia, Tsuruoka says that Russia is “not often seen as a security threat by ordinary Japanese”.

Due to the dispute over the Kuril Islands, Russia and Japan never signed a formal peace treaty to end World War II. The Soviet army occupied the Kurils at the end of the war in 1945 and expelled the Japanese inhabitants from the islands, which now have about 20,000 Russians.

Then-Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in January that his government was “fully committed” to talks on the issue.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev responded to X by saying: “We don’t give a damn about ‘Japanese feelings’. . . These are not ‘disputed territories’, Russia.”

Russia’s plans show a confidence in its missile system that has since proven overblown. The hypothetical mission against Okushiritu involved the use of 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 Hoffman, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, said that during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kh-101 proved less stealthy than expected and struggled to penetrate areas with layered air defenses.

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

Hoffman also noted that the missile proved less accurate than hoped. “For missile systems with limited yields that depend on precision to destroy their targets, this is an obvious problem,” he said.

A second presentation on Japan and South Korea provided a rare insight into Russia’s habit of regularly probing its neighbors’ air defenses.

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

According to the file, the Russian bombers left the Long-Range Aviation Command’s base in Ukraine in the Russian Far East for a 17-hour circuit around South Korea and Japan to record answers.

It noted that there were 18 interceptions involving 39 aircraft. The longest encounter was a 70-minute escort by a pair of Japanese F4 Phantoms which, according to the Russian pilots, “were not armed”. Only seven of these are air-to-air missile-carrying fighters.

The route taken by two Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft earlier this year is almost identical when they circled Japan with a flight over the disputed area near the Kurils during tactical exercises in the Pacific Ocean in September.