200,000 page views

Sometime today, this blog will hit 200,000 page views. I started it in the fall of 2009 as a way of making myself stay abreast of what was happening with the Russian military. I certainly didn’t expect that the topic would be of interest to a large audience, given that Russia and the FSU seemed [...]

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More foreign imports for the military

A year or two ago, procurement from abroad was one of the hottest topics among analysts of the Russian military. This generated lots of controversy in the Russian press over whether it was appropriate for the MOD to buy from abroad, or whether it should support domestic manufacturers. The topic had largely died down once [...]

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Putin spells out national security strategy

As part of his campaign for the presidency, Vladimir Putin has been publishing a series of articles on various themes. Yesterday, he turned to national security and specifically the Russian military. Since the full text is available in English, I won’t spend much time describing what is in the article, but will just comment on [...]

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Russia’s Iran Strategy

Another piece that I wrote for Oxford Analytica has been picked up (in edited form) by CNN. Here’s the repost. – In response to Tehran’s announcement of advances in its civilian nuclear capabilities, the Russian Foreign Ministry on February 15 urged the international community to re-engage Iran in serious negotiations, with the aim of forestalling the [...]

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More details on the Ekaterinburg fire

In the last week, there have been two very interesting reports with additional information on the fire that seriously damaged the Ekaterinburg strategic nuclear submarine back in December. All the reports seem to agree that the submarine’s nuclear missiles and torpedoes had not been offloaded prior to the start of the repair, which meant that there had been [...]

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Russian interests in Syria

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about why Russia protects Assad. In that post, I referred briefly to Russian investments in Syria outside the military sphere. I came across a recent article in Kommersant that spells out these investments in much greater detail. The most important sphere is oil and gas exploration and production. Tatneft and [...]

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A question on Soviet military history from a reader

I received the following question from a reader: Just a brief question, sir. With regard to Soviet Airborne/Air Assault troops during the Soviet war in Afghanistan; because they were armored vehicle operators (mechanic-drivers, operator-gunners) – but paratroops first, did VDV AFV crew members of BMD’s, BMP’s, T-62′s and the like participate in dismounted Air Assault operations, [...]

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Rogozin takes on Navy shipbuilding (and gives us all a good chuckle)

Dmitry Rogozin, the newly minted Deputy Prime Minister in charge of military procurement, has made a statement on naval shipbuilding, in the context of the current discussion of a 30 year naval vessel development program. According to Rogozin, by 2013 Russian shipyards will be able to build 6 submarines and an aircraft carrier per year. [...]

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