MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax-AVN) - Participants in a command post exercise (CPX) in the North Caucasus military district are practicing the fight against guerilla gangs supported by foreign enemy forces.
"The exercise is not only anti-terrorist oriented. We have simulated a training background where illegal armed formations start with creating conditions for a foreign invasion using national liberation movement slogans and support from international terrorism," Armed Forces Chief-of-Staff Anatoly Kvashnin said in an interview with the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper published on Thursday.
Such exercises supervised by Kvashnin take place annually in Russia on a strategic theater of operation.
"In 1998, such an exercise was held in the Volga-Ural military district, later in the Far Eastern, Siberian, Leningrad and Moscow military districts and now in the North Caucasus military district. The previous exercise of this kind happened in the North Caucasus military district when I was its commander in 1997," Kvashnin noted.
He stressed that participants in a tactical exercise of the 19th guard motorized rifle division are practicing the stage of combating illegal armed formations.
"This is the kind of situation that existed in the vicinity of Botlikh, Tando and other mountain villages of Dagestan that guerillas faithlessly invaded in 1999. Now we have simulated such a situation in accordance with the CPX scenario," Kvashnin added.