The Russian military has prepared detailed lists of targets for a potential war with Japan and South Korea, including nuclear power plants and other civilian infrastructure, according to secret documents from 2013-2014 revealed by the Financial Times.
The attack plans, summarized in leaked Russian military documents, include 160 locations, such as roads, bridges and factories, selected as targets to stop “regrouping troops in areas of operational use”.
Moscow’s acute concerns about its eastern border are highlighted in documents shown to the Financial Times by Western sources. Russian military planners fear that the country’s eastern borders would be exposed in any war with NATO and vulnerable to attack by US forces and regional allies.
The documents come from an archive of 29 secret Russian military files, which focus largely on training officers for a potential conflict on the country’s eastern border between 2008 and 2014 and are still considered relevant to Russian strategy.
The Financial Times reported earlier this year that the documents contained previously unknown details about operational principles for using nuclear weapons, as well as scenarios for simulating a Chinese invasion and attacks deep inside Europe.
Asia has become central to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and his broader stance against NATO.
160 locations targeted
In addition to increasing economic dependence on China, Moscow has recruited 12,000 troops from North Korea to fight in Ukraine while strengthening Pyongyang economically and militarily in return.
After firing an experimental ballistic missile into Ukraine in November, Putin declared that “the regional conflict in Ukraine has acquired elements of a global nature.”
William Alberque, a former NATO arms control official who now works at the Stimson Center, told the Financial Times that the leaked documents and the recent deployment of troops from North Korea prove “once and for all that the European and Asian theaters of war are directly and inextricably linked.”
“Asia cannot stand aside from a conflict in Europe, nor can Europe stand by and watch if war breaks out in Asia,” Alberque said.
The list of targets for Japan and South Korea was contained in a presentation that was supposed to explain the capabilities of the Kh-101 non-nuclear cruise missile. Experts who reviewed the document for the FT said the content suggested the document was circulated in 2013 or 2014. The document is marked with the insignia of the Combined Arms Academy, a senior officer training school.
The US has significant forces deployed in South Korea and Japan. Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, both countries have joined a Washington-led export control coalition to pressure Russia’s war machine.
Alberque said the documents showed how Russia perceives the threat from Western allies in Asia, who the Kremlin fears could pin or enable a US attack on its military forces in the region, including missile brigades.
“In a situation where Russia were to attack Estonia suddenly, they would have to attack American forces and supporters in Japan and Korea,” Alberque said.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, did not respond to a request for comment from the US newspaper.
The first 82 locations on the Russian list are military targets, such as the central and regional headquarters of the Japanese and South Korean armed forces, radar installations, air bases and naval facilities.
The remaining sites are civilian infrastructure, including road and rail tunnels in Japan, such as the Kanmon Tunnel connecting the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. Energy infrastructure is also a priority: the list includes 13 power plants, such as the nuclear complexes in Tokai, as well as fuel refineries.
In South Korea, the main civilian targets are bridges, but the list also includes industrial sites such as the Pohang steel plant and chemical plants in Busan.
Much of the presentation is devoted to how a hypothetical attack could be carried out using the Kh-101 non-nuclear missile. The chosen example is Okushiritou, a Japanese radar base on a mountainous island. One slide, discussing such an attack, is illustrated with an animated gif of a large explosion.
The slides reveal the care Russia has taken in selecting its target list. A note on two South Korean command and control bunkers includes estimates of the force needed to breach their defenses. The lists also record other details, such as the size and potential production of the facilities.
Photographs of the buildings at Okushiritou, taken from inside the Japanese radar base, are also included in the slides, along with precise measurements of the target buildings and facilities.
Michito Tsuruoka, an associate professor at Keio University and a former researcher at Japan’s Defense Ministry, said that a conflict with Russia poses a particular challenge for Tokyo if it results from a conflict spreading from Europe — a so-called “horizontal escalation.”
“In a conflict with North Korea or China, Japan would have early warning. We might have time to prepare and try to take action. But when it comes to horizontal escalation from Europe, Tokyo’s warning time would be shorter, and Japan would have fewer options to prevent a conflict on its own,” Tsuruoka said.
While Japan’s military, and especially the air force, have long been concerned about Russia, Tsuruoka said Russia “is not often perceived as a security threat by ordinary Japanese people.”
Russia and Japan never signed a formal peace treaty to end World War II because of the dispute over the Kuril Islands. The Soviet army occupied the Kurils at the end of the war in 1945 and expelled the Japanese residents from the islands, which are now home to about 20,000 Russians.
Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister at the time, said in January that his government was “fully committed” to negotiations on the issue.
Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia, responded to X: “We don’t care about the ‘feelings of the Japanese’… These are not ‘disputed territories’, but Russia.”
Russia’s Eastern Border
Russian plans demonstrate confidence in its missile systems, which has since been proven to be overstated. A hypothetical mission against Okushiritou involved the use of 12 Kh-101 missiles launched from a single Tu-160 heavy bomber. The document estimates the chance of destroying the target at 85 percent.
However, Fabian Hofman, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oslo, said that during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kh-101 proved to be less stealthy than expected and struggled to penetrate areas with multi-layered air defenses.
“The Kh-101 has an external engine, which is a common feature of Soviet and Russian cruise missiles. However, this design significantly increases the missile’s radar signature,” Hofman added.
Hoffman also noted that the missile was less accurate than expected. “For missile systems with limited destructive power that rely on precision to destroy targets, this is an obvious problem,” he said.
The second presentation on Japan and South Korea offers a rare glimpse into Russia’s habit of regularly testing its neighbors’ air defenses.
The report summarizes the mission of a pair of Tu-95 heavy bombers, sent to test the air defenses of Japan and South Korea on February 24, 2014. The operation coincided with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and a joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise, Foal Eagle 2014.
According to the file, the Russian bombers left the Long-Range Aviation Command base at Ukrainka in the Russian Far East for a 17-hour circuit around South Korea and Japan to record responses.
There were 18 intercepts, involving 39 aircraft. The longest encounter was a 70-minute escort of a pair of Japanese F4 Phantoms, which, according to the Russian pilots, were “unarmed.” Only seven intercepts were carried out by fighter jets with air-to-air missiles.
The route is almost identical to that taken by two Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft earlier this year, when they circled Japan during strategic exercises in the Pacific in September, including a flight over the disputed area near the Kurils.
