| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russia closed the last hole in the defense of the Kuriles |
| 2021-12-03 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. By Dmitry Steshin [KP] Five years ago, KP special correspondents visited this island together with a military-geographical expedition and did not immediately understand its true purpose. Moreover, it was not advertised. Officially, the expedition was trying to "uncover the secrets of Matua Island ." Indeed, by the beginning of the 21st century, colleagues and bloggers put a continuous “shadow on the fence” around the island, continuously broadcasting demobilized tales and just nonsense to the Internet. The island, with an area of 52 square kilometers, simply could not contain so many secrets. They talked about secret Japanese chemical plants, a man-made hill hiding 10 floors with an elevator, about a Japanese airfield, with a preserved ideal runway heated by thermal waters. In reality, the island has always been uninhabited, only a fragment of the Ainu tribe once lived near the sea lion rookery. There were no rivers on the island, and the fish did not come to the shores due to volcanic activity. The 10,000-strong Japanese garrison of Matua was poorly supplied, lived from hand to mouth and surrendered without a fight to the Soviet landing party in the summer of 1945. The man-made hill looks perfectly round from only one point, from the others it looks like a crooked mountain of natural origin. From the legendary airfield, only a taxiway remained, and there are simply no thermal springs on the island. Immediately after the Great Patriotic War, our air defense unit and a frontier post stood on Matua, but in the 2000s the island was again empty. We did not immediately understand: what were the military and geographers looking for on the island? It turned out that they were interested in completely prosaic things. How was the Japanese garrison supplied, where were the berths, if the island has no natural bays? And if there are no rivers and lakes on the island - where did 10 thousand Japanese get their water? What is left in the tunnels blown up by the Japanese? The answer, obtained with the help of sappers and military builders, is nothing. Empty, rotten wooden supports and rusty cans. A little later, the commander of the expedition, deputy. Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Vice Admiral Andrei Ryabukhin told KP reporters: "The Kuril ridge is a natural defensive line. If there is no garrison on one of the islands, the entire defense system loses its meaning." In 2016, the island of Matua represented that very hole in the defense and it was urgent to plug it up. Already in September, after the completion of the expedition, the first garrison stood on the island. Then on Matua appeared: a military town, warehouses, garages, life support systems, roads. And now, quoting the press release of the Pacific Fleet: “The calculations of the coastal complex Bastion have been deployed for the first time on Matua. On this remote island, missilemen will be on a 24-hour watch over the adjacent waters." The mystical secrets of Matua have been replaced by simple and strict military secrets. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #3 1,766 km Distance from Matua to Tokyo Matua Island (Matsuwa, Матуа), Kurile Islands (Kuril), Russia Jun 15, 2021 — Matua Island is located 1,092 miles from Tokyo and 943 miles from Attu Island |
| Posted by: Bertie Crains2651 2021-12-03 18:50 |
| #2 Bastion is a coastal defense missile system. An SSM and antiship missile system with a 350 km (215 mile) range. |
| Posted by: badanov 2021-12-03 10:38 |
| #1 “The calculations of the coastal complex Bastion have been deployed for the first time on Matua. On this remote island, missilemen will be on a 24-hour watch over the adjacent waters." ...The important question now is what kind of missiles will the missilemen be missiling? SAMs will be bad enough; with the right missiles they could actually cover USAF and JASDF bases in northern Japan. SSMs are far, far worse; the entire northern half of Japan would be under threat. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2021-12-03 09:13 |