Professor Kimberly Marten tries to explain an apparently schizophrenic Russian foreign policy toward the United States in this policy memo on PONARS Eurasia. She comes up with four possible explanations: Putin succumbed to his own ignorance and biases. Putin’s advisors are afraid to tell him the truth. Inconsistent foreign policy is the result of infighting […]
Russia
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Is there an epidemic of pneumonia among soldiers in Leningrad Oblast?
Almost 1000 draftees from Leningrad Oblast have been hospitalized in less than two months, reports Ekho Moskvy. According to the radio station, most of the soldiers have been diagnosed with pneumonia. There are no official statements about the apparent epidemic. Ekho Moskvy says that the sick soldiers are brought to the hospital in Saint Petersburg […]
Russian military moves from Windows to Linux
The Russian military has decided to move away from Microsoft Windows on all computers. The decision is grounded in security concerns connected with using an operating system that is produced abroad. That reports Izvestia. Instead there will be installed a version of Astra Linux on all computers in the Russian Armed Forces. LibreOffice will be […]
What to expect for Russian Baltic Fleet in 2018
The press service of the Russian Western Military District has announce a few things to expect from the Baltic Fleet in 2018, reports RIA Novosti. Most notably there will be established another air defense unit with S-400 missiles. The fleet will also receive a new missile corvette. In addition to these things the general modernization […]
Proxy wars seem to be a thing again
Sébastien Roblin for War on the Rocks in connection with the American decision to provide Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine: Michael Kofman, an analyst with extensive knowledge of Russian military affairs, was skeptical that a “few missiles” would be of any serious military benefit in a New York Times column in August. He wrote that […]
How would a war between Russia and the West play out?
There is a specific military scenario connected with the possibility of a war between Russia and the West in the Baltic area. This summary explains how the war can develop from a limited insurgency to a nuclear exchange.
Maybe former Soviet republics don’t like to be Russia’s “sphere of interest”
Mikhail Barabanov in Moscow Defense Brief: Russia holds the Zapad drills along its western borders once every four years; the previous such event took place in 2013. This year, however, the reaction from some of Russia’s neighbors to the west has been nothing short of hysterical. […] For all the Western concerns, the scenario of […]
Russia’s aircraft carrier begins three year modernization
A contract has finally been signed regarding the modernization of Russia’s only aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, reports TASS. The work is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2018 and to last for three years. Originally the modernization should have started in September, but due to a lack of finances the work could not […]
Good article about what a war with Russia would look like
In connection with Zapad 2017, Russia said that the exercise was about training defensive maneuvers. BILD has an article that claims otherwise: However, BILD recently spoke to two leading analysts from a western intelligence service who revealed that Zapad 2017 was neither an “anti-terror exercise” nor “purely defensive”, but a “dry run” for a “full-scale […]
Putin joke shows Russian narrative about the West
This week Russian president Vladimir Putin held a press conference in Moscow in the presence of no less that 1600 journalists. And if anybody should doubt the narrative that exists in Russia about the West, I think the following answer to a question about international relations and defense spending gives a good illustration: “We didn’t […]