Russia launches large-scale military exercises on the borders of Ukraine and Georgia while negotiating with NATO

This Wednesday, while NATO and Russia negotiated under enormous pressure the military de-escalation in Eastern Europe, more than 10,000 soldiers from the Slavic country began new military exercises in the regions near Ukraine and Georgia, countries to which the Alliance promised in 2008 a future membership of the Atlantic organization. The Russian Defense Ministry has reported the start of military maneuvers with live fire from motorized battalions and armored Army battalions and ships from the Black Sea and Caspian fleets in southern Russia, the Crimea and the Caucasus, areas adjacent to the the two former Soviet republics that Moscow wants to ban forever into NATO.

The maneuvers started this Wednesday have the objective, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, to improve the preparation of the units against the enemy artillery and snipers. The trials are being carried out in the regions of Rostov (west) and North Ossetia (Caucasus), from which Russia launched two military interventions respectively: in Donetsk and Lugansk, in 2014 and 2015, and in South Ossetia to deal with to the Georgian Army in 2008.

The movement of the military is constant.

According to US estimates, the Kremlin has more than 100,000 troops deployed around Ukraine.

The Russian Armed Forces announced on December 25 that some 10,000 soldiers were returning to their bases after a month of training.

However, last Tuesday, a day after the bilateral summit in Geneva (Switzerland), Moscow announced the dispatch of another 3,000 soldiers and 300 combat vehicles to four areas near Ukraine.

A Russian tank opened fire in the Rostov region on Wednesday.

At the same time that the military began its rehearsals, Russian President Vladimir Putin was attending to other fronts no less important for the Kremlin: pensions and the health crisis caused by the coronavirus. In a meeting with his Cabinet of Ministers, the president has urged to set the revaluation of the subsidies to retirees above the general increase in prices, which the Rosstat statistics agency placed at 8.39% in 2021. “Al 8.6%, with a small margin because there are still no final figures on inflation ”, has ordered Putin, who has recognized that this problem worries millions of citizens.

Inflation is one of the great weaknesses of the Russian Government. The Central Bank of Russia attributes the sharp rise in prices to supply problems that affect the entire planet, and over the past year it was forced to revise exchange rates up to seven times, which rose from 4.25 % to 8.5%.

This rise in inflation has not been accompanied by an increase in parity with either wages or pensions: the government had originally set retiree incomes to rise by 5.9% as of the New Year. According to Elena Bibikova, the vice president of the Russian Upper House's Commission for Social Policy, told the RIA Novosti agency, the increase proposed by Putin would cause the average pension to rise by about 1,400 rubles (16 euros) more per month, since the pension The average currently is around 16,000 rubles (188 euros). Upon receiving the president's instructions, the Ministry of Finance has reported that this revaluation will cost the state budget an additional 549,700 million rubles (6,500 million euros), a significant burden for a pension fund endowed this year with 3,7 trillion rubles from public coffers

Another front for the Russian Government is the health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the omicron variant. "We see what is happening in the world, we have at least a couple of weeks to prepare," Putin told Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Wednesday, urging him to increase the rate of vaccination, especially in peripheral regions. Putin has also praised the Russian vaccine Sputnik V. "Apparently it is working effectively, even more than other vaccines used in the world," said the president.

The authorities announced this Wednesday the detection of 698 new positives by omicron, a figure that contrasts, for example, with the 17,946 new cases of coronavirus. The authorities, who do not give an updated number of vaccinated, put the percentage of the immunized population at 63.2%, which includes both citizens who have received at least one dose and those who have been previously infected with covid.

The president closed his agenda this Wednesday with a visit to the Russian Prosecutor General's Office for its 300th anniversary.

Putin has asked his staff to monitor human rights compliance in prisons.

In autumn, the leak to the

portal of several videos of torture of prisoners led to the dismissal of several officials from Russian prisons.

Despite the authenticity of their complaints being verified, the web is still prohibited.

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