President Vladimir Putin likes to talk about Moscow’s plans to create new super “weapons of the future” and to show videos of how they will work (Moskovsky Komsomolets, February 23, 2020; see EDM, March 1, 8, 2018 and February 21, 26, 2019), but neither Russia’s... MORE

Russian officials and the pro-Kremlin press have been praising the successful offensive against Idlib by troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The northwestern Syrian province is the last stronghold of the anti-al-Assad opposition. All other such opposition-held areas across Syria have already been overrun... MORE

In Russian-occupied Crimea, people are praying with Christian Orthodox priests for rain and snow because the last six months passed by with virtually no precipitation. Because of the dry winter, local reservoirs are now almost empty. Journalists forecast apocalyptic drought scenarios for the peninsula. And... MORE

Russian military science contributes in many ways to planning concerning a range of defense and military issues. The political-military leadership attaches primary importance to efforts to research and examine future warfare in order to help the state prepare for and invest in the development of... MORE

In the positional war in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas, where enemy trenches are often only a hundred meters away from each other, snipers have a target-rich environment and play a critical tactical role. As elsewhere, snipers in the Donbas war proved to be an... MORE

Moscow approved a number of policy decrees on January 30 that de facto establish a foundation for the introduction of a Russian Arctic strategy until 2035 (see EDM, February 11). Russia’s huge expectations for the Arctic region center on the Northern Sea Route (NSR), whose... MORE

In the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, the Russian Armed Forces—mainly via their “proxy,” Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Arab Army—are confronting Turkish military units (see EDM, January 30, February 18), putting severe strains on the Moscow-Ankara relationship. But Russian military activities along Turkey’s borders are not... MORE

In late December 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an ukaz (decree) detailing plans to write off a large portion of the debt collectively owed by the country’s defense industrial complex (Oboronnyi Promyshennyi Kompleks—OPK). The details are not publicly available since the ukaz was classified... MORE

On February 13, the breakaway Transnistria region’s representative to the Joint Control Commission (JCC) demanded that Russian “peacekeeping” forces be augmented from the current size of over 400 personnel to 4,200. The latter figure is notably one that Russian media outlets frequently invoke as the... MORE

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) defense ministers gathered in Brussels, on February 12, to discuss how the Alliance should respond to Russia’s rapidly expanding non-strategic, long-range, dual-use (nuclear or conventional warhead) missile capabilities. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the development and deployment... MORE