Simply put, “We do not accept NATO’s claims,” said Rogozin.

According to NATO spokesperson James Appathurai, the Zapad-2009 (literally, West-2009) war games were “the largest since the end of the Cold War.” He also said that the 28 NATO member states were displeased that Russia failed to invite observers to the exercises, which the alliance considers to be a violation of the Vienna accords.

“There was the general sense that the political message of the exercise was incongruous with the general improvement in political relations and practical cooperation which is under way between NATO and Russia,” Appathurai said.

In a letter to the NATO General Secretary on November 12, Polish Interior Minister Radoslaw Sikorski expressed concern that the war games between Russia and Belarus were taking place too close to the Polish border.

“It’s unclear to us what’s behind these exercises, what information Russia wants to send the world, conducting the largest exercises on NATO’s borders since the moment of the fall of the Soviet Union,” said Sikorski.

In his statements on Wednesday, Rogozin dismissed concerns about the location of the exercises. “They are held on our western border because Belarus is there,” he said. “We cannot hold Russian-Belarusian exercises in Belarus somewhere in the Far East. There is no Belarus there.”

Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma, had previously dismissed the concerns of the Polish Interior Minister, saying that his letter “presents Russia in the capacity of aggressor” and has a negative effect on relations between the two countries.

The Zapad-2009 war games took place this past September and involved approximately 6,000 Russian troops, 6,500 Belarusian troops, 103 aircraft and helicopters, 470 armored vehicles, 228 tanks, and 234 self-propelled and towed artillery guns, mortars and missile salvo systems.

President Dmitri Medvedev said that the exercises were defensive in nature and would be held in the future “on a regular basis.”

The statements follow an agreement signed in October by hard-line Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to join the rapid reaction force of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which would extend Russia’s anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems to Belarus. “Militarily speaking, it is virtually a shield against NATO,” said Pavel Borodin, State Secretary of the Union of Russia and Belarus.

The CSTO, formed in 2002 and made up of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, is considered to be Russia’s post-Soviet response to NATO.

According to Zavarzin, precision-guided weaponry may be installed on Kaliningrad’s border regions with Poland.

Russia is acting tough after Warsaw signed agreements on locating an American missile defense base housing 10 interceptor rockets in Poland, some 185 kilometers from Russian soil.

Responding to a journalist’s question, Zavarzin said that there was no present need to put nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad. However, he said the proposal had been floated, and that it “does not fall under the scope of agreements and negotiations on strategic stability, which we are holding with the Americans.” The decision, he said, was ultimately left to the commander-in-chief. At present, the colonel-general said, Russia needs to modernize its surface, underwater and coastal divisions.

Mikhail Babich, Zavarzin’s deputy on the committee, told Gazeta.ru that placing a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic was a hostile act on the part of the US, and confirmed that Russia was planning a symmetrical response.

“We are developing a series of measures for a symmetrical response to the USA in the context of the deployment of ABM [ballistic missile defense] in Poland and the Czech Republic, and other hostile acts,” Babich said. “They are being developed to guarantee Russia’s safety and as a response in case of a strike on our territory.”

Meanwhile, defense experts questioned by the publication were skeptical about the need for precision-guided weapons and tactical nuclear arms in Russia’s western enclave. Russia’s army, they said, had other hardware that already guaranteed the safety of the country’s western border.

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