[ToloNews] Troops from Russia and Uzbekistan began joint military drills on Monday near the Afghan border, amid fears in both countries that a worsening security situation in Afghanistan could spill over into Central Asia.
Russia said 1,500 Russian and Uzbek troops would take part in the five-day exercises that began at the Termez military site in Uzbekistan, the TASS news agency reported.
In a sign of how seriously Moscow views the potential threat from Afghanistan, it said it would send a much bigger military contingent to Tajikistan for separate trilateral exercises.
Those separate drills are expected to take place on Aug. 5-10 and involve Russian, Tajik and Uzbek forces. Uzbekistan said on Monday its unit had arrived in Tajikistan.
Security has rapidly deteriorated in Afghanistan as the United States withdraws troops. Moscow fears that could destabilise its southern defensive flank and push refugees into its Central Asian backyard.
On Monday, Russia's defence ministry said that 1,800 of its soldiers would take part in the Tajik drills, instead of 1,000 as initially planned. More than 2,500 troops would be involved in total, it said.
Moscow will also use 420 units of military hardware for the drills, double the quantity originally planned, it said.
Tajikistan's defence ministry said in its statement that the drills would involve more than 300 armoured vehicles, 25 combat and transport helicopters and an undisclosed number of fighter and bomber jets as well as artillery.
"The aim of the drills is to effectively test the combat ability of military units in the event of the situation being destabilised on the state border," it said.
[REGNUM] Very hot weather will set in the Astrakhan, Volgograd, Rostov regions and the Stavropol Territory by the end of the working week, said Roman Vilfand, scientific director of the Hydrometeorological Center.
According to him, the heat wave will affect many regions in the European part of Russia, but in some continental regions the average temperature will reach 43C (109.4 F).
"It is very hot on the lower Volga, in the Astrakhan region. Up to 43C in the Volgograd region, in the Rostov region also up to 43C, as well as in the south of Stavropol," said the head of the Hydrometeorological Center.
The same abnormal increase in temperature, according to Wilfand, will occur in cities on the Black Sea coast.
"Vacationers go for warmth, but it's actually hot there. Even on the Black Sea coast up to 35 ºC and in the Sochi area too. In Simferopol 30-37C, in Sevastopol 30-35C," he noted.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
