A joint Sri Lankan–Russian military exercise opened on Tuesday in Russia’s Primorye region — the first time Sri Lankan troops have trained at a Russian range, according to the Russian defence ministry’s press service, reported by Moskovskiy Komsomolets.
The Sri Lanka Army confirmed the deployment four days earlier. A contingent of 20 officers and 55 other ranks departed Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport on 16 September for the 249th “Sergeyevsky” Combined Arms Training School. Brigadier S.D.B. Dissanayake, Commander of the 581 Infantry Brigade, saw them off.
The exercise runs to 27 September.
The direction of travel has reversed
The first edition was held in Sri Lanka. “Wolverine Path 2025” ran from 25 October to 4 November 2025 at the Army Training School, Maduru Oya — the first joint field training between the Sri Lanka Army and the Russian armed forces.
This year the Sri Lankan side travels instead. The two armies have gone from a single hosted exercise to a reciprocal series in under a year.
Each side is teaching what it knows
The Russian account and the Sri Lankan one describe the same exercise with different emphasis, and the gap is informative.
The Sri Lanka Army frames it around operational readiness, tactical proficiency and interoperability in counter-insurgency scenarios — the jungle warfare competence Colombo has been marketing since the end of its own civil war.
The Russian defence ministry frames it around special forces countering illegal armed formations, with particular attention to the wide use of reconnaissance and strike unmanned aerial vehicles. That is the capability Russia has developed at scale in Ukraine, and it is what Sri Lankan troops will be exposed to at Sergeyevsky.
Russian participants are drawn from special forces units and a combined-arms army of the Eastern Military District based in the region.
Who is in command
Opening remarks came from Major General Semyon Nikolaev, a Hero of Russia, for the Russian side, and Major General Anuruddha Solagaraachchi for Sri Lanka. Solagaraachchi thanked the Russian government and armed forces for organising the exercise.
Beyond the training tasks, the programme includes sporting and cultural events.
The two names are the same exercise
Sri Lanka calls it “Wolverine Path II – 2026”; the Russian ministry calls it «Тропа росомахи – 2026», rendered in English coverage as “Wolverine Trail – 2026”. Tropa carries both senses. There is one exercise, not two.
A note on sourcing
No Sri Lankan newsroom has reported the opening. The account here rests on the Sri Lanka Army’s own announcement of the departure and on a Russian newspaper’s report of the Russian defence ministry’s statement — both interested parties describing their own activity.
The Russian report carries no photograph of the exercise: the image published with it is labelled by the newspaper as generated by an AI model. Nothing in either account has been independently verified on the ground, and no imagery of the drills themselves has been published.
Not reported
Neither source gives the total number of Russian participants, says which Sri Lankan units the 75 personnel were drawn from, or states what the exercise costs or who pays. Neither says whether the Sri Lankan contingent operates the drones or only observes them. Neither addresses whether training with Russian forces carries any sanctions exposure for Colombo, nor whether the government consulted Parliament before the deployment.
