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Attack of the Caspian Sea Monster!
The ekranoplan rusting in its berth, 2010. If you’ve never heard of the Russian ekranoplan, here’s what you need to know. A ground effect plane that flies only a few yards above water (right, it’s...
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Russian Resilience
Andrei Loshak has an article out on the endemic corruption in Russia. IKEA’s attempts to open new stores there are met with sheer absurdity, the currency of the realm. The absurd is everywhere in a...
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New Links
I’ve started reading a whole bunch of new sites and blogs. You should too. Here’s what’s been added recently to the links: The Art of Manliness Comic Book Cartography Frog in a Well Hungarian Spectrum...
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The Mask of the Bear: Soviet Deception in Operation Bagration
German columns advance past immobilized Russian tanks, July 1941. From the moment the first Wehrmacht tank crossed the Soviet border in 1941 until the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43,...
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Victory!
C Company, 2nd Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment marches in the Victory Day Parade in Red Square for the first time. Saturday marked the 65th anniversary of V-E Day in most of Europe, but for Russia –...
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Hiding in Plain Sight
Last week, Russian defense firm Concern Morinformsystem-Agat announced it had designed a clever new launch system for cruise missiles: the Club-K. Designed in the form of a standard shipping...
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Red Menace
One might be forgiven for thinking we’ve been trapped in some sort of time-warp-nexus lately. The Germans have bloodied the English yet again, Paul Krugman thinks we’re doomed to repeat the Long...
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Treason Doesn’t Pay
…or so Vladimir Putin reminds us. As the ten accused Russian spies returned home, Putin said that their outing was a “betrayal,” and vowed that there would be “tough times for the traitors,” whose...
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Man of Action
Plenty more where these came from. H/T to Juha. Tagged: government, humor, Russia
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Lines Drawn, Sides Chosen
One of the more interesting results of last night’s UNSC vote to authorize a no-fly zone over Libya was the voting pattern of the Council. More specifically, the abstentions. Look at the countries that...
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A Pretty Prize
This is a portion of a post that had been in the works for some time, but was, as they say, overtaken by events. Today, France announced that it would sell the pair of Mistral-class helicopter...
View Article“There is no ‘new way of war’. It is not Gerasimov’s, and it is not a doctrine.”
A brilliant, self-declared “polemic against the use of the term the ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ to describe a supposed dramatic turn in Russian strategic thinking.” Mark Galeotti has been writing about the...
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The Madness of Contingency
The other night, while watching Deutschland ’83, I found myself wondering what a 1990s-era Soviet Union – and Eastern Bloc, in general – might have looked like. What a world of possibility! To what...
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The Self-Inflicted Myth of Omnipotent Russia
One of many examples of the Russian/Soviet octopus in art, its tentacles implying a dominion it possesses anything but.If you haven’t yet had a chance to read Keith Gessen’s terrific article on the...
View ArticleSanctions and Financial Warfare in the 21st Century
In July of this year, China’s first regiment of S-400 surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems was delivered by Russia and accepted into PLA service. The following month, Russia confirmed that the last 10...
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Quick Thoughts on INF
Another treaty – this time, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) – slain by John Bolton, the unilateralest man alive. It will come as no shock that I find this move misguided, executed in bad faith,...
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