The Russian authorities are quite effective at responding to specific and immediate domestic challenges. However, like governments elsewhere, they are less capable of dealing with slower-moving tectonic shifts. And consequently, they often view these as even more disturbing when such developments suddenly take on public... MORE

The Donald Trump administration has moved beyond browbeating the European countries involved in the Nord Stream Two project and threatening sanctions against the natural gas pipeline’s partners; it is now making the same threats against its contractors. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her successor... MORE

Commenting on remarks from early December 2018 by Vice Admiral Andrew Lewis, the commander of the United States Second Fleet, that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) knows how to deal with the Russian military posture in Crimea and Kaliningrad, the deputy chair of the... MORE

As Russia’s Armed Forces continue to benefit from the process of military modernization, a growing area of concern for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) planners is Russia’s continued steps to boost anti-access, area denial (A2/AD) capabilities close to its borders. An important feature of this... MORE

On September 14, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported on a landing exercise in Kaliningrad Oblast—Russia’s Baltic exclave, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania (Mil.ru, September 14). The exercise apparently involved up to 25 surface ships, boats and supply vessels of the Baltic Fleet, over 30... MORE

Moscow is paying increasing attention to the development and strengthening of its Armed Forces’ conventional high-precision strike capabilities. This encapsulates its cruise missile, coastal-defense, operational-strategic and operational-tactical high-precision weapons. Some of these have been tried and tested during combat operations in Syria. And undoubtedly, such... MORE

Yevgeny Primakov and Dmitry Kozak, names identified with Russia’s past attempts to “federalize” Moldova with Transnistria (1997 “Primakov Plan Memorandum”; 2003 “Kozak Plan Memorandum”), are now returning to Moldova in updated iterations. Kozak, currently deputy prime minister, has been tasked by Russian President Vladimir Putin... MORE

The so-called “Arab Spring” and subsequent mass-protest-driven developments in the Middle East as well as across the post-Soviet space have alarmed Russian military strategists. In Moscow, the notion of “hybrid warfare”—which, in the Russian reading, represents a combination of coordinated military and non-military measures (Voenno-Promyshlennyy... MORE

Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast is currently hosting several of the games of the World Cup soccer championship, but this Baltic exclave has recently attracted widespread attention for an entirely different reason. On June 18, Western media reported on Russia apparently undertaking ambitious renovation works on a... MORE

On April 9, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev asked his Cabinet for specific measures to alleviate the consequences of the economic sanctions the United States passed (on April 6—see EDM, April 9) against Russian companies and individuals, with metallurgy, the energy sector and the defense industry... MORE