Russians, Chinese complete war games

BEIJING -- Chinese and Russian troops completed their first joint military exercises yesterday with a mock paratrooper invasion on China's east coast.

The eight days of maneuvers, with 7,000 Chinese and 1,800 Russian troops, underscored military ties between the Cold War adversaries; the ties have been motivated by unease with US dominance in world affairs.

Yesterday, Chinese and Russian paratroopers simulated an airfield seizure; planes dropped combat vehicles by parachute on the Shandong Peninsula in the Yellow Sea.

Propaganda leaflets were dropped in ''a psychological tactic to shake the enemy's will," the official Chinese news agency Xinhua said. ''The exercise ended with the defeat of the 'enemy.' "

The Russian news agency Interfax said Russian planes had landed 10 combat vehicles and two armored personnel carriers by parachute in high winds.

''The military exercise deserves a high praise," the agency ITAR-Tass quoted the Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, as saying. ''Both the Russian and Chinese troops effectively coordinated their actions, because they clearly understood the joint mission they fulfilled," he said.

Ivanov and his Chinese counterpart, Cao Gangchuan, were on hand to watch the exercises.

The exercise, dubbed ''Peace Mission 2005," began last week in the Russian port of Vladivostok and shifted on Saturday to China.

Ties between the two governments have warmed since the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s.