MOSCOW, July 18 (Reuters) - Russia began large-scale air force training manoeuvres in the North Caucasus on Monday in a step towards boosting security against an Islamic insurgency raging in the region, a newspaper reported.
The exercise is the largest of its kind in the predominantly Muslim region of Kabardino-Balkaria in 15 years and will involve fighter jets and combat helicopters, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily quoted air force spokesman Vladimir Drik as saying.
The manoeuvres are aimed at strengthening military capabilities in a region where Moscow has promised to beef up security to protect the 2014 Winter Olympics from threatened Islamist rebel attacks.
The war games, which will continue until August 10, are being carried out also with an eye to Russia’s southern neighbour Georgia, with which Moscow fought a brief war in 2008.
"Tactics and methods of deploying air forces for combat in the mountains, including army aviation… will be worked out here," a military source who declined to be named was quoted by the paper as saying. An air force spokesman reached by Reuters declined comment on the report.
A decade after federal forces toppled a separatist government in Chechnya in the second of two wars since 1994, Moscow is struggling to contain an insurgency aimed at carving out an independent Islamic state in the North Caucasus.
The training comes weeks after a new 7,000 strong group of law-enforcement officers was created in the nearby region of Dagestan, where violence has exploded, making it the deadliest region along Russia’s insurgency-stricken southern flank.
"There was war in this region not long ago, and since it is one of the tensest regions in the country, there is new military equipment being sent to outfit the troops there," said Anton Lavrov, an anaylst at Moscow-based military think-tank CAST.
"It’s a question not only of militants, but of possible renewed tensions with Georgia," he said, adding that the military conducts similar training every year in the North Caucasus, but on a smaller scale.
Russia fought and easily won a five-day war with Georgia over rebel South Ossetia in August 2008. Moscow has accused Georgia of trying to stir ethnic tensions ahead of the Sochi Games, a charge Tbilisi denies.
Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Services, the domestic successor of the Soviet KGB, told President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday that the agency was devoting "serious attention" to the North Caucasus, where suicide bombings and targeted killings occur daily.
On Monday, two police officers were killed in southern Chechnya in a land mine explosion, state news agency RIA cited a local law-enforcement official as saying.
Russia aims to undercut support for the insurgency by increasing tourism in the mountainous region, where it is trying to draw investment for a $15 billion cluster of ski resorts.
Russia is due to host the Winter Olympics in the nearby region of Krasnodar in three years’ time.
Insurgent violence has spread in recent months to the region of Kabardino-Balkaria, where militants gunned down three Moscow tourists en route to ski at Mount Elbrus, a popular local resort and the tallest peak in Europe. Security forces have responded to the spike in violence by increasingly using air support in the mountainous area in its operations against insurgents.
