The Russian military prepared detailed target lists for a possible war with Japan and South Korea that included nuclear power plants and other civilian infrastructure, according to secret files from 2013 to 2014 seen by the Financial Times.
The strike plans were summarized in a leaked set of… Russian military The documents cover 160 locations such as roads, bridges and factories, chosen as targets to stop the “regrouping of forces in areas for operational purposes.”
Moscow's deep concern about its eastern flank was highlighted in the documents, which Western sources showed to the Financial Times. Russian military planners fear that the country's eastern borders will be exposed in any war with Russia NATO And vulnerable to attack from US assets and regional allies.
The documents were extracted from a cache of 29 secret Russian military files, largely focused on training officers for potential conflict on the country's eastern border from 2008 to 2014 and are still seen as relevant to Russian strategy.
This year, the Financial Times reported on how the documents contain previously unknown details about the operating principles for using… Nuclear weapons Defining war game scenarios a Chinese invasion And for deep strikes Within Europe.
Asia has become central to Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategy of pursuing the all-out invasion of Ukraine and his broader stance against NATO.
In addition to its increasing economic dependence on China, Moscow has recruited 12,000 North Korean soldiers to fight in Ukraine while supporting Pyongyang economically and militarily in return. After launching a test ballistic missile at Ukraine in November, Putin said that “the regional conflict in Ukraine has taken on elements of a global nature.”
William Alberk, a former NATO arms control official who now works at the Stimson Center, said the leaked documents and North Korea's recent deployment proved “once and for all that the European and Asian theaters of war are directly and inextricably linked.” He added: “Asia cannot stand idly by in the event of conflict in Europe, and Europe cannot stand idly by if war breaks out in Asia.”
The list of targets for Japan and South Korea was included in a presentation aimed at explaining the capabilities of the Kh-101 non-nuclear cruise missile. Experts who reviewed it for the Financial Times said the contents indicate it was distributed in 2013 or 2014. The document bears the insignia of the Combined Arms Academy, a training college for senior officers.
The United States has large forces concentrated in South Korea and Japan. Since the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the two countries have joined a Washington-led export control coalition to pressure the Kremlin's war machine.
Albirk said the documents showed how Russia views the threat posed by the West's allies in Asia, who the Kremlin fears could determine or enable a US-led attack on its military forces in the region, including missile brigades. “If Russia were to suddenly attack Estonia, it would have to hit U.S. 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 of a military nature, such as the headquarters of the central and regional commands of the Japanese and South Korean armed forces, radar installations, air bases and naval facilities.
The rest are civil infrastructure sites including Japan's road and railway tunnels such as the Kanmon Tunnel linking the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. Energy infrastructure is also a priority: the list includes 13 power plants, such as the nuclear complexes in Tokai, as well as fuel refineries.
In South Korea, the most important civilian targets are bridges, but the list also includes industrial sites such as steel mills in Pohang and chemical plants in Busan.
Much of the presentation concerns how to carry out a hypothetical strike using a non-nuclear Kh-101 volley. The example chosen is Okshirito, a Japanese radar base located on a mountainous island offshore. One slide, discussing such an attack, is illustrated with an animated image of a large explosion.
The slides reveal the care Russia took in selecting the target list. A memorandum against two command and control bunkers in South Korea includes estimates of the force required to breach their defenses. The listings also indicate other details such as the size and potential production of the facilities.
Photographs of buildings at Okshirito, taken from inside the Japanese radar base, are also included in the slides, along with precise measurements of the targeted buildings and facilities.
A conflict with Russia poses a particular challenge for Tokyo if it is the result of Russia spreading the conflict from Europe — so-called “horizontal escalation,” said Michito Tsuruoka, an associate professor at Keio University and a former researcher at Japan’s Defense Ministry.
“In a conflict with North Korea or China, Japan would get early warnings. We might have time to prepare and try to take action. But when it comes to horizontal escalation from Europe, the warning time will be shorter for Tokyo and Japan will have fewer options on its own to prevent conflict.”
While the Japanese military, and the air force in particular, have long been concerned about Russia, Tsuruoka said Russia “is not often viewed as a security threat by ordinary Japanese.”
Russia and Japan never signed a formal peace treaty to end World War II due to the dispute over the Kuril Islands. The Soviet army seized the Kuril Islands at the end of the war in 1945 and expelled the Japanese population from the islands, where about 20,000 Russians now live.
Fumio Kishida, then Japan's prime minister, said last January that his government was “fully committed” to negotiations on the issue.
Dmitry Medvedev, former president of Russia, said in response on Channel X: “We do not care about the feelings of the Japanese… We do not care about the feelings of the Japanese.” . . “These are not ‘disputed territories’ but Russia.”
Russia's plans show confidence in its missile systems that has since been proven to be exaggerated. The hypothetical mission against Okcherito involved the use of 12 Kh-101 aircraft launched from a single Tu-160 heavy bomber. The document rates the chance of destroying the target at 85 percent.
However, Fabian Hoffman, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, said that during the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kh-101 proved less stealthy than expected and had difficulty penetrating areas with multi-layered air defences.
Hoffman added: “The Kh-101 missile features an outboard motor, which is a common feature of Soviet and Russian cruise missiles. However, this design choice significantly increases the missile's radar signature.
Hoffman also noted that the missile proved less accurate than expected. “For missile systems with limited yield that rely on pinpoint accuracy to destroy their targets, this is an obvious problem,” he said.
The second presentation on Japan and South Korea provides a rare look at Russia's habit of regularly probing its neighbors' air defenses.
The report summarizes the mission of a pair of Tu-95 heavy bombers, which were sent to test the air defenses of Japan and South Korea on February 24, 2014. The operation coincided with Russia's annexation of Crimea and the conduct of a joint US-Korean military exercise, Foal Eagle. 2014.
According to the file, Russian bombers left the Long-Range Aviation Command base at Ukrynka in the Russian Far East for a 17-hour tour around South Korea and Japan to record responses.
It indicates that 18 out of 39 aircraft were intercepted. The longest encounter was a 70-minute escort by two Japanese F4 Phantoms which, according to the Russian pilots, were unarmed. Only seven of the interceptions were by fighter planes carrying air-to-air missiles.
The route is almost identical to the path taken by two Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft earlier this year when they circumnavigated Japan during strategic maneuvers in the Pacific in September, including a flight over the disputed area near the Kuril Islands.
