DHAKA: Russia’s defense ministry said on Thursday that large-scale military exercises had started in southern Russia and in disputed territories on Russia’s borders.

The exercises involve over 2,000 anti-aircraft troops and 500 items of weaponry and will last until April 10, Interfax news agency reported, says The Straits Times.

The defense ministry said the exercises were taking place in Russia’s Southern and North Caucasus Federal Districts, as well as on Russian military bases in Armenia, the Georgian separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Ukraine’s Crimea region, which Moscow annexed last year.

They are likely to be viewed in the West as a show of force as relations between Russia and the West are at their most strained since the Cold War because of the Ukraine crisis.

BDST: 1722 HRS, MAR 05, 2015