Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, and its air-defense missile system in the Crimean Peninsula during the final stage of large-scale military exercises.
Journalists were invited on September 9 to a firing range at the Black Sea coast to display drills that involved paratroopers, tanks, cruise missiles launched from a submarine, and the S-400 air-defense missile system, which Moscow has touted as state-of-the art weapons.
The Kavkaz-2016 drills began this week across southern Russia and Crimea, involving more than 120,000 troops.
Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry was quoted as saying that Russia has formed a "self-sufficient military group" in Crimea capable of repelling attempts to seize the peninsula.
Russia illegally annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014 and since then has sent troops and heavy weaponry there.