Comment on military reform for Valdai

The Valdai Club asked me a couple of weeks ago to comment on the achievements of Russian military reform to date. Here’s what I said: One of the main premises of Russia’s Military Reform involved eliminating the mass mobilization army and replacing it with one focused on permanent readiness, and getting rid of the units [...]

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Why NATO won’t recognize the CSTO

RIA-Novosti’s asked me for a comment on the likelihood of NATO establishing relations with CSTO. The following comment was published today on the Valdai Club website. We should keep in mind that NATO isn’t really an organization in the way that we think about organizations. It’s primarily a collection of countries, each with its own [...]

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Valdai Club 7: Military reform and international cooperation

This is the final post in my series on the Valdai Club military section meeting. The last discussion panel of the conference was entitled “New Challenges – New Alliances: From Ideological Alliances to Interest-based Coalitions.” The three presenters were Yves Boyer, the deputy director of the Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique in Paris, myself, and [...]

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Valdai Club 6: Missile Defense

The conference took place at the same time as the G8 summit in Deauxville, which included a statement on possibilities for missile defense cooperation between Russia and the US/Europe. The discussions on this topic at Valdai, however, left me very much pessimistic about the likelihood for such cooperation. There were two events directly related to [...]

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Valdai Club 4: A conversation with General Tretyak

On Friday May 27th, the Valdai military section had the opportunity to meet with General Andrei Tretyak, the Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the Defense Ministry. We were originally scheduled to meet with Defense Minister Anatoly Serdiukov and Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov, but neither was available when the time came. General [...]

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Valdai Club 3: Touring the Don-2N Radar Facility

On May 26, we were taken to the Don-2N radar facility in Sofrino, about a 2 hour drive northeast of Moscow. We were taken around the station by Major General Vladimir Derkach, the Chief of Staff and First Deputy Commander of the Russian Space Forces. After the obligatory tea, the first stop, of course, was [...]

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Valdai Club 2: Visit to 5th Motorized Rifle Brigade

On May 25th, the Valdai group was taken to Alabino, on the outskirts of Moscow, to visit the base of the 5th Guards Independent Motor Rifle Brigade (formerly known as the Tamanskaya Division). The visit included tours of the brigade’s museum, the barracks in which enlisted soldiers live and the base’s sports facilities. We also [...]

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Valdai Club 1: Panel on Russian Military Reform

I spent last week in Moscow at the inaugural meeting of the Valdai Club’s military section. I will have a number of posts this week with my impressions of the meetings. I’ll start today with a brief summary of the overall schedule and a discussion of the first substantive panel, which was on developments in [...]

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