Japan to Alaska: What’s behind Russia-China joint military drills?

Japan has accused Russia of violating its airspace with a patrol plane. On Monday, Japanese fighter jets issued a warning to the Russian military over radio signal before firing flares at a Russian plane that had entered its airspace.
Japan’s Defence Minister Minoru Kihara told reporters: “A Russian Il-38 patrol aircraft has violated our airspace over our territorial waters north of Rebun Island, Hokkaido, on three occasions.”
He added that it was the first announced incursion of Japanese airspace by a Russian aircraft since a Tu-96 bomber entered in southern Okinawa in June 2019.
The arrival of the Russian aircraft is believed to have been part of a joint military exercise announced by Russia and China earlier this month. The two countries have been conducting joint drills for more than 20 years, but stepped them up following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the onset of the subsequent war.
These joint drills, which are increasingly taking place in new locations around the world, have alarmed the West and its allies like Japan. Several have taken place this year.
The incident reported by Japan on Monday happened after Russia announced on Saturday that it would conduct a military drill with China in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk in the western Pacific Ocean.
Russia’s Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday that warships from Russia and China had entered the Sea of ​​Okhotsk on Tuesday.
The Sea of ​​Okhotsk lies between Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in the east, the Kuril Islands in the southeast and Japan’s island of Hokkaido to the south.
The naval exercise is named Beibu/Interaction – 2024 and it features the firing of artillery, as well as the use of anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weapons.
This is the third joint military drill in this location between the two countries. China and Russia carried out their first joint military exercise in the Sea of Okhotsk in 2017 and the second in 2022.
Japan has territorial disputes with Russia and China. China claims the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, while Japan insists the islands do not belong to any state. With Moscow, Tokyo has disputes over the Kuril Islands between Hokkaido and Kamchatka.
While the two countries have ramped up such exercises in recent years, joint drills date back to 2003, when a multilateral exercise took place in Kazakhstan and China.
For this, Russia and China partnered with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Similar multilateral exercises were conducted with these partner countries until the late 2010s in locations including China, Russia and the partner countries.
In 2013, China and Russia conducted a bilateral naval exercise in the Sea of Japan. In 2019, they conducted a multilateral naval exercise on the South African coast in partnership with South Africa.
Some 78 drills took place between 2003 and 2021, according to data compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, DC-based think tank.
As of August 2024, CSIS had recorded 102 joint military drills. More drills have taken place since then.
Between 2022 and 2024, more than 20 drills have been held.

Unlike the members of NATO, Russia and China are not treaty allies. The increased number of military drills has led some analysts to believe that Moscow and Beijing are trying to improve what in military terminology is known as the “interoperability” of their forces. In simple terms, that means the ability of two independent militaries to operate each other’s equipment and to fight alongside each other, seamlessly.
Analysis by CSIS of the Alaska drill concluded that the two countries were demonstrating that they can “project power” and “reach the US homeland”.
The drills come amid the intensifying Ukraine war. Moscow has warned NATO countries that if they lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles within Russian territory, it would be interpreted by the Kremlin as an act of war.
In July, after the Alaska drill, Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for China’s defence ministry, told a news conference that the drills were being conducted to strengthen mutual trust and cooperation between Russia and China.
“This action is not aimed at third parties, it is in line with relevant international laws and international practices and has nothing to do with the current international and regional situation,” Zhang said.