Section: European Union Institute for Security Studies (France)
Russia’s info-war: theory and practice
The fabrications and distortions propagated by the Kremlin during the Ukraine crisis have made the concept of ‘information warfare’ common currency. Less widely appreciated is the Russian leadership’s understanding of the term and the vision of the world upon which it rests. Russian military theorists often argue that the...
Russia’s military: the weak links
Although President Putin has repeated time and again that he will not be drawn into an arms race for fear of bankrupting Russia, that is precisely what his policies imply. On 28 January 2015, two Russian TU-95 bombers, presumably armed with nuclear weapons, approached British airspace and disrupted civil aviation. The last in a series of fifty...
Sanctioning Russia: the right questions
Sanctions are often considered to be effective only if and when they force a change in the behaviour of their intended target. This approach is based on military logic, as sanctioning is considered a form of coercive diplomacy. This is, however, a simplistic way of approaching the matter. Whereas the results of direct military involvement are...