Section: Royal United Services Institute (UK)
Ukraine: Understanding Russia
With the Ukraine crisis casting a long shadow over the Wales Summit, NATO must strive to understand Russia’s mindset …read more Source: Royal United Services...

Ageing railways, poor-quality roads and an inadequate response by the authorities to calls for basic services are the weak underbelly of the Russian infrastructure system.Download the articleThe Russian language has a specific word to describe the conditions of roads during particularly adverse weather. Rasputitsa usually describes heavy snow or mud, which makes traversing these roads almost impossible. That such a word exists, to illustrate the difficulties in getting around this vast country, highlights the continued importance of basic infrastructure, such as roads and railways, in Russian thinking.Russia remains highly reliant on roads and railways to transport large volumes of people …read more Source: Royal United Services Institute...

Regardless of how difficult Erdogan’s Turkey may now be, it is a key state in NATO and must be treated as such.There is a theory that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey purchased the Russian-made S-400 system to protect himself from another coup attempt, not as a capability for the Turkish armed forces more generally. This would align with another – and perhaps equally a conspiracy theory – that argues that the US could turn off the existing air defence protection network around the Turkish president by remote control, thereby allowing the Turkish Air Force to attack Erdogan with its …read more Source: Royal United Services...
With the Ukraine crisis casting a long shadow over the Wales Summit, NATO must strive to understand Russia’s mindset …read more Source: Royal United Services...