Western Military District - troops and commander

The Western Military District is the military-administrative unit of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the north-west of the country. It is designed to protect the western borders of Russia. The headquarters of the Western Military District is located in the "cultural capital" of our homeland - St. Petersburg.

Military-administrative division of the Russian Federation

The main administrative unit of the Armed Forces is the district. Since December 1, 2010, according to the President's Decree, four such units have been formed in Russia: Central, Eastern, Western and Southern Okrugs. The first two are the largest in the occupied territory, and the last - the smallest. Military-administrative reform consisted of several stages. So, according to the first of them, from September 1, 2010, five basic units were created: the North Caucasus, the Volga-Urals, the Siberian, the Far Eastern and Western military districts. However, this division did not last long. On December 1 of the same year, a second Annex to the presidential decree came into force, according to which only four administrative units remained.

Central Military District

This administrative unit included the Republic of Altai, the Republic of Mari El, the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Republic of Mordovia, the Republic of Tuva, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Udmurt Republic, the Chuvash Republic, the Republic of Khakassia, the Altai, Perm, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Kirov, Kurgan, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Penza, Samara, Orenburg, Saratov, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk, Tomsk regions, the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug - Ugra and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Y.

Eastern Military District

This administrative unit included in its borders the Republic of Sakha, the Republic of Buryatia, Zabaikalsky, Kamchatsky, Khabarovsk, Primorsky Krai, Amur, Sakhalin, Magadan regions, as well as the Jewish Autonomous Region and the Chukotka Autonomous District.

Southern Military District

This administrative unit included in its borders the Republic of Adygea, the Republic of Ingushetia, the Republic of Dagestan, the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, the Republic of Kalmykia, the Chechen Republic, the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories, Rostov, Volgograd and Astrakhan regions.

Western Military District

This administrative unit included in its borders the Republic of Komi, the Republic of Karelia, Arkhangelsk, Belgorod, Vladimir, Vologda, Bryansk, Voronezh, Ivanovo, Kaluga, Kostroma, Kaliningrad, Kursk, Leningrad, Moscow, Murmansk, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novgorod, Pskov, Ryazan , Oryol, Smolensk, Tambov, Tula, Yaroslavl, Tver regions, the cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, as well as the Nenets Autonomous District.

Composition of the Western Military District

This administrative military unit, formed during the reform of 2008-2010, united two military districts - Leningrad and Moscow. In addition, the Baltic Sea and the Northern Fleet, as well as the First Air Defense and Air Force Command, were part of the ZVO.

The ZVO became the first administrative unit formed in the course of this new division system. The troops of the Western Military District consist of two and a half thousand military units and formations. Their total number exceeds four hundred thousand troops - about forty percent of the total strength of the Russian Armed Forces. The commander of the Western Military District is responsible for all military formations of all kinds and types of troops deployed on this territory . The exception is the Space and Strategic Missile Forces . In addition, its operational subordination includes the following formations: Internal forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Border Guard Service of the Federal Security Service, parts of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, as well as other ministries and departments of the Russian Federation that perform tasks on the territory of this district.

Organization and number of troops: Airborne Forces, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Air Defense Forces

The Western Military District includes four parts of the Airborne Forces. This: a separate Guards Regiment special. Appointed in Moscow, two Guards airborne assault divisions (in Tula and Pskov) and one Guards airborne division (in Ivanovo). It also includes parts of the Coast Guard and marines: a separate motorized rifle regiment (located in Kaliningrad), a separate motorized rifle brigade (in Gusev), a Marine Guards Brigade (in Baltiysk and Mechnikovo settlement), two coastal missile brigades (in Donskoy, in Kaliningrad and Chernyakhovsk), an artillery brigade (in Kaliningrad), a separate regiment of marines (in the village of Sputnik Murmansk region). In addition, it included two special-purpose brigades. The commander of the Western Military District is responsible for the Baltic and Northern Fleet, the Aviation of these fleets, the first command of the air defense and the air force, as well as the OSK EKO.

Ground troops

The ZVO has in its composition the sixth combined-arms Red Banner Army (motorized rifle, artillery, anti-aircraft and engineering brigades), the 20th Guards Red Army (motorized rifle, tank, missile, artillery and rocket artillery brigades). The Western Military District also extends to parts of the district subordination, including an operational group of Russian troops stationed in the Transnistrian region (Republic of Moldova), and a separate guards motorized rifle Sevastopol brigade.

Commander of the district

The headquarters of this military-administrative unit is on the Palace Square in the city. The head of the Western Military District, Lieutenant-General A. Sidorov (in this position - since December 24, 2012), in the period from October 2010 to November 2012, Colonel-General A. Bakhin was in charge of the post of chief. The chief of staff - the first deputy commander is Admiral N. Maximov. Head of the organizational and mobilization department - Deputy Chief of Staff - Major-General E. Burdingsky. Deputy commander of troops - Major-General I. Buvaltsev.

Exercises in the ZVO

The military reform affected not only the administrative division of the army, but also implies the modernization of the technical base and armament, for the better, the combat training has changed - not only officers and contract employees, but also a conscripted soldier. Now much attention is paid to conducting field exercises and exercises.

Modern soldiers get acquainted with military equipment in real field conditions, and not on methodological recommendations. Thus, during the period from May 27 to June 5, planned exercises with shooting from modern Iskander-M missile systems were held at the ZVO. The exercises were part of the verification of the combat capabilities of the Russian Armed Forces equipped with high-precision weapons. During this event, the military worked out the issues of organizing a combined destruction of air and ground-based weapons of especially important targets of the alleged enemy. In the exercises, one missile unit of the Western District was deployed, with long-range aircraft and Iskander-M missile systems in service.

During this event, the missile unit marched in a combined way, its length was more than two thousand kilometers. The soldiers worked out reconnaissance issues along the route of the complex, concealed deployment, occupation of firing positions. At the final stage, together with the long-range aviation units, the missilemen conducted combat training firing to defeat the conventional target with air-borne and ground-based cruise missiles at the maximum possible distance. To assess the effectiveness of the results, the latest unmanned aerial vehicles of domestic production were used.

Conclusion

The soldiers did not have time to return to their units, and the leadership of the district conducted a "debriefing" based on the results of the exercises, as new, even larger ones began, which involved the following federal administrative districts: part of Privolzhsky, Central and North-Western. The military district raised seven anti-aircraft regiments and five aviation regiments in the "rifle". During these events, the radio and anti-aircraft missile forces reflected a massive raid on the aircraft of the alleged enemy, protecting strategically important targets from air strikes.

As you can see, today the defenders of the fatherland are not bored. The leadership of the country is concerned about the army's fighting capacity and is doing everything to raise it to a qualitatively new level.