It was reported earlier this month that Frants Klintsevich,  first deputy chairman of Russia's committee on defence and security and a graduate of Sverdlovsk military-political tank artillery high school, does not think the Japanese have the right to defend themselves against the very real threat of incoming North Korean missiles. President Trump offered air defence … Continue reading Russia Cries Wolf Over a Threat from Japan

Around the time that Stalin's mummified corpse was taken out of the mausoleum, Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote a verse honouring Humour, which, when decapitated, just laughed. Eloquent testimony to the indomitable power of the human spirit in surviving the years of the Gulag. But few have ever suspected that the head of the country's foreign intelligence … Continue reading The Head of Russian Foreign Intelligence Reveals a Sense of Humour

An atmosphere of self-congratulation over recent victories in Syria has combined with a pugnacious reponse to minimal NATO improvements to its defence posture to create the image of a newly self-confident Russian bear. But how realistic is that image? We have noted in a previous post real nervousness beneath the bravado. Normally, particularly when the … Continue reading Russia’s Chief of the General Staff is Under Attack

Time magazine has sold you a whopper (9/18/17). It has repeated inaccurate assertions peddled by other 'news' outlets that the late Lt.Col. Stanislav Petrov, duty officer in an air defence installation under a closed town, Serpukhov-15, south of Moscow, saved us all from annihilation in September 1983 after another miscalculation,  the tragic Soviet shootdown of … Continue reading No One Actually Saved Us From Thermonuclear War in 1983