While the Baltic and Nordic countries are watching both exercises closely, the massive scale and shroud of confusion surrounding Zapad has sparked fears that it could be used to mask deployments for a future intervention, according to Western officials. Such concerns are not without merit: After all, Moscow used drills smaller than this year’s to prepare for real war in Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia in 2008. In July, Ben Hodges, the commanding general of the U.S. army in Europe, warned that Zapad could be a “Trojan horse” for something more nefarious by Moscow.

Zapad, which means “West” in Russian, comes at a time of deteriorating relations between Russia and West. From Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and war in Ukraine, to its meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, Western officials have come to distrust the Kremlin’s proclamations and intentions. Zapad has also made clear that many countries are still searching for the best way to respond to the Kremlin in this new standoff. “It’s very easy right now for Russia to signal its discontent to the West,” Jyri Raitasalo, a docent at the Finnish National Defense University in Helsinki, told me. “Zapad is a military exercise, but in addition to its military significance it has an even bigger role in the wider political and media war.”

Zapad, in itself, is not new. It is the latest iteration of military exercises that began in the 1970s under the Soviet Union and continued until its collapsed in 1991. It was revived in 1999 and later expanded under President Vladimir Putin as part of a four-year cycle of military drills that rotate through Russia’s geographic regions. The Kremlin has never shied from provocation in its war games: Western officials have stated that they believe Zapad exercises in 2009 and 2013 included simulated nuclear strikes against Warsaw and Stockholm.

Raitasalo said that it’s the job of generals to prepare for any eventuality, but that the latest Zapad is clearly also meant to send a strong message of resolve to NATO, which has been beefing up its eastern flank since war broke out in Ukraine in 2014. It’s also meant to show non-aligned Western countries like Finland and Sweden that they shouldn’t defy Russia. “Fear is a sign of strength for them,” he said.

This muscular posturing from Moscow has spurred to a range of reactions for the countries on the frontlines of the Kremlin’s current face off with the West. On September 8, Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine, said Zapad was “a smokescreen” for a new “invasion of Ukrainian territory”; Antoni Macierewicz, Poland’s defense minister, raised the alarm, charging that Russia could use the exercises to leave troops in Belarus and change “the balance on NATO’s eastern flank.” In response to such reactions, Jussi Niinisto, Finland’s defense minister, said that “Western countries had swallowed the bait” laid by Moscow in reacting so loudly.