Russian and Chinese Marines Hold Joint Exercises Near Vladivostok
In Vladivostok the coastal phase of the second stage of the international Russian-Chinese naval exercise Naval Interaction 2017 is coming to an end.
The day before the Chinese and Russian military visited the ships of the two countries, but the main activities took place at the training ground near Vladivostok. Our correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov is reporting live.
Andrey, good afternoon! Are there any early results of the marine units competition?
Hello! We are now at the marine training ground near Vladivostok. The competitions of the Russian and Chinese marine units have just finished here. There were two main stages.
The first stage was the 1200-meter obstacle line. At first glance, it may seem not much, but in order to go through this distance, one must have very good marine skills and experience.
There are a lot of various barriers and barbed wire. They have to climb onto what is called the bare facade of the building, crawl under the railway through pipes and even underground tunnels. Russian and Chinese units of 10 people performed the tasks simultaneously.
The best time of passing this complex route was a little more than 10 minutes. As expected, the winner is the assault combat battalion of the 155th Marine brigade.
However, the Chinese lagged behind their Russian colleagues by only 30 seconds. Given that they saw the track only three days ago, this is a very good result. The shooting range was the next test.
Today Chinese and Russian marines shot from the standard weapons. They had only an assault rifle, a machine gun, and a grenade launcher. Everyone showed good performance. Two units, a Russian and a Chinese one, shared the first place, Russians won the second place, and the third was taken by the guests of the competitions.
Let's listen to the main judge, the battalion commander, Sergey Bunkov. They performed at the same level, each unit scoring 36 targets hit. And the second units took the second and third places. Another Russian team took the second place, and the Chinese team, the fourth unit, took the third place. The teams are close to each other in rifle training.
The marine reconnaissance unit of the Russian Federation secured a landslide victory in the reconnaissance test. I would like to remind you that these competitions were held as part of the joint Russian-Chinese exercises Naval Interaction 2017. It can be said that these competitions closed the coastal phase.
The sea phase starts tomorrow. While today the marines of the two countries got acquainted at the obstacle line and the firing range, tomorrow they'll learn to fight against terrorism together at sea, including as part of joint groups. We’ll follow the course of the exercises. That’s all for now.
Andrey? Andrey, thank you! Andrey Kolesnikov has told about the completion of the coastal phase of the Russian-Chinese exercises in Vladivostok.