Russia’s military prepared detailed target lists for a potential war with Japan and South Korea that included nuclear power stations and other civilian infrastructure, according to secret files from 2013-2014 seen by the Financial Times.
The strike plans, summarised in a leaked set of Russian military documents, cover 160 sites such as roads, bridges and factories, selected as targets to stop the “regrouping of troops in areas of operational purpose”.
Moscow’s acute concern about its eastern flank is highlighted in the documents, which were shown to the FT by western sources.
Russian military planners fear the country’s eastern borders would be exposed in any war with Nato and vulnerable to attack from US assets and regional allies.
The documents are drawn from a cache of 29 secret Russian military files, largely focused on training officers for potential conflict on the country’s eastern frontier from 2008-14 and still seen as relevant to Russian strategy.
The FT has this year reported on how the documents contain previously unknown details on operating principles for the use of nuclear weapons and outline scenarios for war-gaming a Chinese invasion and for strikes deep inside Europe.
Asia has become central to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy for pursuing the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and his broader stance against Nato.
In addition to its increased economic reliance on China, Moscow has recruited 12,000 troops from North Korea to fight in Ukraine while bolstering Pyongyang economically and militarily in return.
After firing an experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine in November, Putin said “the regional conflict in Ukraine has taken on elements of a global nature”. William Alberque, a former Nato arms control official now at the Stimson Center, said that, together, the leaked documents and recent North Korean deployment proved “once and for all that the European and Asian theatres of war are directly and inextricably linked”. “Asia cannot sit out conflict in Europe, nor can Europe sit idly by if war breaks out in Asia,” he said.
The target list for Japan and South Korea was contained in a presentation intended to explain the capabilities of the Kh-101 non-nuclear cruise missile.
Experts who reviewed it for the FT said the contents suggested it was circulated in 2013 or 2014. The document is marked with the insignia of the Combined Arms Academy, a training college for senior officers. The US has significant forces gathered in South Korea and Japan.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, both countries have joined the Washington-led export control coalition to put pressure on the Kremlin’s war machine.
Alberque said the documents showed how Russia perceived the threat from the west’s allies in Asia, who the Kremlin fears would pin down or enable a US-led attack on its military forces in the region, including missile brigades. “In a situation where Russia was going to attack Estonia out of the blue, they would have to strike US forces and enablers in Japan and Korea as well,” he said. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, did not respond to a request for comment.
The first 82 sites on Russia’s target list are military in nature, such as the central and regional command headquarters of the Japanese and South Korean armed forces, radar installations, air bases and naval installations.
The remainder are civilian infrastructure sites, including road and rail tunnels in Japan such as the Kanmon tunnel linking Honshu and Kyushu islands.
Energy infrastructure is also a priority: the list includes 13 power plants, such as nuclear complexes in Tokai, as well as fuel refineries. In South Korea, the top civilian targets are bridges, but the list also includes industrial sites such as the Pohang steelworks and chemical factories in Busan.
Much of the presentation concerns how a hypothetical strike might unfold using a Kh-101 non-nuclear barrage. The example chosen is Okushiritou, a Japanese radar base on a hilly offshore island. One slide, discussing such an attack, is illustrated with an animated gif of a large explosion.
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