*To read Part One, please click here.   A deeper look at Romania’s new national defense strategy, taken up for consideration by the parliament on June 3, provides some answers as to why Russia’s reaction to this 46-page planning document has been so aggressive (see... MORE

In March 2019, Dmitry Zhelobov, a specialist on China at Russia’s Urals Federal University, warned that Beijing was shifting from relying on soft power in Central Asia to using hard power. If Russia did not take this threat seriously, he added, China might have its... MORE

Romania’s new national defense strategy for 2020–2024 has just entered parliamentary debate and is already generating international controversy. The 46-page document (Hotnews.ro, June 4) has drawn Moscow’s ire because it defines the Russian Federation as a “threat” in the Black Sea region and indirectly accuses the... MORE

Russia’s political-military leadership regularly complains about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) military exercises, especially any staged close to the Russian borders. This year, the Alliance planned to conduct Defender Europe 2020, its largest exercise on the European continent since the end of the Cold... MORE

On June 12, the first Borei-A class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN), the Knyaz Vladimir, officially entered service with the Russian Northern Fleet (Mil.ru, June 12). The submarine’s transfer to the fleet was originally scheduled for 2017, but was postponed to 2019. Tests of the submarine... MORE

The main battle line of the Libyan civil war—between the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by the self-proclaimed Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, and forces loyal to the United Nations–recognized Government of National Accord (GNA)—has shifted east, from the outskirts of Tripoli to the Mediterranean city... MORE

Moscow’s political-military leadership places growing emphasis on long-range stand-off precision strike systems as a key element in its ongoing modernization program, complementing efforts to strengthen “pre-nuclear” deterrence and offering additional conventional capabilities. One emerging pattern is to equip Russia’s naval forces, the Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy... MORE

On May 31, Russian security forces killed two alleged militants in the suburbs of the Ingushetian city of Sunzha, in an area where officials had introduced a counter-terrorism operation regime. The Russian National Antiterrorist Committee reported that the suspects were surrounded in an uninhabited building.... MORE

Ambiguity can be a useful political tactic, securing for a state the advantage of flexibility while leaving its adversaries guessing; but sometimes it simply camouflages confusion. Russia seeks to present its policy in the Middle East as usefully ambiguous. But in fact, it is at... MORE

For more than a decade, Vladimir Putin has made the development of the Northern Sea Route as well as the broader Arctic littoral and seabed a focus of his national policies. And over this period, coverage of this effort has almost invariably followed the same... MORE