Wikileaks publishes explosive documents

As welt.de reported, documents published by Wikileaks about Russian military exercises on the borders with Lithuania and Poland reveal shortcomings in the Russian military. The exercises were among Russia’s largest maneuvers since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The maneuvers on the borders with NATO members Lithuania and Poland took place in August and September 2009. Russia conducted one of its largest military exercises along its western border since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. For several weeks, around 33,000 Russian soldiers practiced a range of military operations as part of the “Ladoga 2009” and “Zapad 2009” maneuvers, including crossing rivers and conducting missile warfare. The exercises were presented in such a way that the agreed observation by NATO observers could be circumvented. Nevertheless, NATO tracked the exercises using the latest satellite technology, as the documents published by Wikileaks prove. NATO experts reached a damning verdict after observing them: the Russian army is struggling with major problems, including outdated equipment and low troop morale.

Date: 30/09/2026

Particularly provocative was the simulated objective of the maneuvers, which took place not far from Leningrad: the participating soldiers were to simulate an attack from Poland and Lithuania involving the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This alone was an act of provocation in NATO’s eyes. Voices from Lithuania and Norway called for a NATO response to the exercises. Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, and NATO members and applicants from the Baltic region called for intensive dialogue with NATO. There was also growing support for the demand that NATO conduct a similar exercise of its own—without, unlike Russia, excluding the military observers required under the rules. Criticism of the Russian maneuvers was also voiced in Germany. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen described the Russian exercises as “provocative and inappropriate.”

Christian Bathen