KALININGRAD, September 28 (RIA Novosti)...
Zapad (West) 2009 started on September 18 and ends on Tuesday, with about 12,500 service personnel and up to 200 items of military equipment and hardware having taken part.
"I would like to point out that the aim of our exercise is of a defensive nature. We are not threatening anyone," Medvedev said on Monday while attending the exercise in Russia"s Kaliningrad Region.
The president also said that the development of the Armed Forces is impossible without such drills and therefore all scheduled exercises in Russia would be conducted according to plan regardless of the ongoing global financial crisis.
"Despite problems of economic nature that emerged within the last year we are going to implement the whole scheduled program of military drills," Medvedev said.
The ex-Soviet neighbors announced plans in the late 1990s to form a union state in a bid to achieve greater political, economic and military integration, but the project has largely existed on paper.