FRUKUS 2012 Planning Conference Held in St. Petersburg

25.04.2012 Main planning conference of the FRUKUS 2012 joint naval exercise is taking place in St. Petersburg. The exercise will be held in June 2012, for the first time in the Baltic Sea.

Representatives of participating countries attend the conference, i.e. Russia, France, Great Britain, and the US. Russia is represented by Baltic Fleet (BF) delegation headed by Capt 1 rank Sergei Volkov, Chief of BF Combat Training Dept.

The conference will last till Apr 27; participants will discuss concept, organization, plan, and main episodes of the coming exercise.

The FRUKUS joint naval exercise is the annual four-lateral training activity aimed at practicing joint actions at sea within multinational task groups.

The exercise's history goes back to 1993. Originally, it had a name of RUKUS (Russia, UK, US). In 2003, France was invited to join the exercise. Since that time it is called FRUKUS and held on the four-lateral basis.

Through its history, the FRUKUS exercise has developed from series of negotiations into headquarter trainings, and in 1996 it turned into practical exercise at sea. It is held annually in one of the participating countries by rotation. In past years, it took place in different regions of the Atlantic (near France in 2009, Great Britain – in 2010, the USA – in 2011).