Military

The Russian Military Police, from Syria to Karabakh

(PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo) Following the Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement signed in Moscow on November 9, 2020, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that units of the Military Police…

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Strategic Sderzhivanie: Understanding Contemporary Russian Approaches to “Deterrence”

(Marshall Center) Executive Summary: There is a mismatch between the Western concept of deterrence and the Russian concept of sderzhivanie, and particularly strategic sderzhivanie. Strategic sderzhivanie encompasses the Western concepts…

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Strategic Russian Strategic Decision-Making in a Nordic Crisis

(RMR blog) Here’s the second in a series of policy briefs on Russian strategic culture and leadership decision-making, written for a collaborative project organized by the Marshall Center with support from…

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5 things you need to know about last week’s explosion in Russia

(WP Monkey Cage) (Co-authored with Michael Kofman) An Aug. 8 accident at Russia’s Nonoksa missile testing facility left seven dead and caused a brief radiation spike in a nearby town. What went wrong Vague and potentially…

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The United States and Uzbekistan: Military-to-Military Relations in a New Era of Strategic Partnership

(PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo) The 2016 change of power in Uzbekistan to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev prompted the deepening of cooperation between Washington and Tashkent. While rapprochement touched many areas of bilateral…

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Russia’s Militia Groups and their Use at Home and Abroad

(IFRI) What makes the militia milieu so unique and important for understanding today’s Russia is that it finds itself at the intersection of state institutions, patronage mechanisms, criminal structures, and grassroots…

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Podvig: Very few of Russia’s Avangard hypersonic glider tests were successful and the programme was nearly shut down four years ago

(The Economist) Tom lehrer’s satirical ditty on the Nazi-turned-American rocketeer was faithful to the essence of early missile development, whose principal challenge was hoisting the weapons into the sky. Gravity did most…