Japanese invasion of Kurils in summer of 1991

Khanzeer

Banned
Better them than the Chinese. If the US is intervening along the far eastern former Soviet Pacific coast, to support one faction or another, then a Japanese "Peace Keeping Force' in the Kurils might work. Sort of a like the 1918-1920 intervention...
Yes but assumes that their is an active civil war in former ussr
I don't think that is part of the scenario
 
The Japanese would be doing this without American backing. And the Soviets still had nukes.

The USSR was in a state of collapse, but few things unite Russian nationalists, communists, national bolsheviks, and even greens (because of the whale hunt) like getting really chesty about Russian dominion over the Kurils. I think somewhat recently I posted a video of a protest in Moscow where all of these groups got together to condemn Putin for talking to Abe about the issue.

In addition, China and South Korea still get really hostile whenever Japan does literally anything today. In the early 90s, that was still more fresh, and likely to have repercussions.

However, lets just isolate that and focus on the military issue. The Russian Army was in a state of collapse almost worse than the state was at this point in time, but in terms of sheer assets and manpower, they dwarfed what Japan could bring to the table at the same time. Japan's ground forces are not equipped for amphibious warfare or really for any kind of foreign deployments. Its naval and air assets are significant enough to cause trouble for any Russian attempts at reinforcement, but Russian missile forces of the non-nuclear kind could still do immense damage to Japanese bases and gradually eliminate those assets.
 
^ what nonnuclear missiles forces do you have in mind ?
@Raferty
They had bases at Svobodnyy and at Drovyanaya which plausibly could be alerted on short notice to launch ICBMs with chemical and biological payloads at Japanese bases in Northern Honshu.

However, what would be more likely would be the deployment of Guards Rocket Divisions to Vladivostok, who could launch cluster munitions at Japanese bases on Hokkaido using short range ballistic missiles.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
They had bases at Svobodnyy and at Drovyanaya which plausibly could be alerted on short notice to launch ICBMs with chemical and biological payloads at Japanese bases in Northern Honshu.

However, what would be more likely would be the deployment of Guards Rocket Divisions to Vladivostok, who could launch cluster munitions at Japanese bases on Hokkaido using short range ballistic missiles.
ICBM carried CW warheads ,? I didn't know that
Short range ballistic missiles would have to based in sakhalin to hit hokkaido
 
ICBM carried CW warheads ,? I didn't know that
Short range ballistic missiles would have to based in sakhalin to hit hokkaido
Yeah thats probably true, I just meant that transport would go first to Vladivostok (getting there by rail is actually not that hard by the 90s, and the Rocket Forces that could get there first were likely based in Omsk, which would be beefed up in terms of security because of its naval and air assets.) Obviously any ground combat over the Kurils is going to involve Sakhailin.

I have to admit, though, the politics of this all is really daunting for Russia, because technically, didn't the RFSSR secede from the USSR by this point? I know Yeltsin wanted them out, but the Soviet Army wasn't particularly keen, and who controlled which forces is hard to suss out. The Kurils are Russian territory, but the split in the military was messy and not yet complete. I wonder if this would hamper logistical response in terms of getting forces eastwards, particularly because the plains of Kazakhstan might not be available.
 
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