Between August 03 and August 12, the Russian Baltic Fleet held its annual Ocean Shield exercise in the Baltic Sea. While smaller compared to last years exercise with only 30 warships participating, this years exercise was more imported because it was build on an offensive scenario, rather then a defensive one during 2019. While the opposing forces of the 2019 exercise were identified as NATO forces, the opposing force of the 2020 was less easy to identify. The offensive nature and swift sea control gained by the Russian Navy could suggest an surprise attack against NATO when few NATO forces are present, or the attack against a neutral country with significant maritime forces, most likely Sweden. Just like last year, the exercise could be monitored through the use of open source material but unlike 2019 there was less available. Especially the Russian open sources such as state media and main newspapers were less vocal about the progress of Ocean Shield 2020. The third part of the exerc...

July 13 Russian media sources reported that the Udaloy class destroyer RFS Vice Admiral Kulakov and the Oscar-II class submarine RFS Orel held a series of exercises during the night of July 12 to 13. The exercises involved air-defense and anti-submarine warfare. the exercise reportedly took place in the Gulf of Finland. [ 1 ] July 14 Frank Bottema  reported the deployment of various Russian warships in the Baltic Sea and manage to capture several of them on satellite imagery. The first set of pictures showed the Type 636 improved Kilo class submarine RFS Volkhov in conjunction with a Steregushy class corvette, a Parchim class corvette and a Sibiryakov class hydrographic survey vessel. All ships were located east of the Swedish island of Gotland. The Swedish patrol vessel HSwMS Trosso and the Latvian patrol vessel P-09 were also in the vicinity. The second set of pictures showed the amphibious landing ship RFS Pyotr Morgunov at sea near Baltiysk, together with several o...